Saeed jaan, the UN, WHO and CIA (factbook) all put the average life expectancy in Iran around 70 years and ranked somewhere between 100-113th in the world. That's pretty much the same ranking we had from 1960-1980 (100 in 1960, 102 in 1970 and 109 in 1980).
The average life expectancy has been going up for the past 40 years all over the world, so to gauge progress you have to do it relative to other countries and the ranking is the only way to do that in an intelligent way. Of course, someone else already mentioned how to interpret it in an unintelligent way!