This contribution addresses the strategic significance of family politics for the Islamic Republic of Iran, facing multifaceted crises. It identifies Iran’s recent family and gender policies, which are characterised by the fusion of neoliberal principles with moral politics and can be found in other authoritarian neoliberal regimes. Drawing on a historical analysis of familialism in Iran, spanning pre- and post-revolutionary periods, we contend that the recent shift towards a gendered-moral politics emphasising harsh pronatalism and family-oriented governance, termed ‘neoliberal familialism’, reflects a profound shift in the political rationality of the Islamic Republic towards neoliberal governance to manage its socio-economic crises. In other words, not only have neoliberal principles affected the family politics of the last decade in Iran, but a specific form of masculine nationalist neoliberalisation in Iran has also been possible and advanced partly through neoliberal familialism.