Iran Opens New National Library amid International Tension

President Mohammad Khatami inaugurated the National Library of Iran’s new building March 1 in Tehran. He indicated that the opening of the 100,000-square-meter facility “provides everyone a good opportunity to think about books and their many uses, adding that people learn to love and seek peace and justice in libraries,” the Tehran Times reported March 2.

Although construction began in 1996 at a cost of roughly $34 million, the library is only 60% operational but is expected to increase its one million holdings by as many as 600,000 volumes over the next 10 years. National Library Director Muhammad Kazem Mousavi Bojnourdi said in the Times, “We have no problem buying books, even from the countries with which we have political problems.”

Those political problems, however, did prevent American Libraries Editor Leonard Kniffel and Jeremy Stone of Catalytic Diplomacy, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that facilitated a visit to Iran last year by Librarian of Congress James Billington, from entering the country. Even though they had invitations from the library and visas issued by the Iranian Interests Section in the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, both were detained upon arrival at the airport for several hours and then sent home without explanation.

Mehdi Atefat, the officer in Washington who issued the visas, told AL March 3 that the deportations had to do with the “critical situation” in diplomatic relations between the United States and Iran. The library’s Director General of Information and Reference Services Gholamreza Amirkhani, who was one of several Iranian librarians who tried to intervene at the Tehran airport, said he had talked with Khatami and the president had promised to look into the incident.

Posted March 4, 2005.