The National Library and Archives of Iran (NLAI; Persian: سازمان اسناد و کتابخانه ملی ایران (ساکما), romanized: Sazman-e Asnad va Ketabkhaneh-ye Melli-ye Iran) or National Library of the Islamic Republic of Iran is located in Tehran, Iran, with twelve branches across the country. The NLAI is an educational, research, scientific, and service institute authorized by the Islamic Consultative Assembly. Its president is appointed by the President of Iran. The NLAI is the largest library in the Middle East and includes more than fifteen-million items in its collections. On 19 March 2024 an eyewitness discovered that some ten thousand National Library publications eg. pre-1979 revolution magazines held by the library and archives organization were destroyed secretly. The government claimed they were "old and unreadable". Deputy Head of National Library, Esmat Momeni, in an interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), denied news report on annihilation of old archival publications and stated: No annihilation of old archival publications has taken place in the National Library and will not. What has happened is a common procedure in classification of sources, such as periodicals. She noted that contrary to what is claimed, there were neither exquisite and valuable books and publications, no journals and books related to the years before the victory of the Islamic Revolution among the destroyed collection. she also emphasized that the only publications destroyed are those mentioned above. Moreover, there were no demand for those publications and they were all highly damaged, torn, infected and moldy which caused physical harm to library staff who work in repositories and store rooms. Momeni added that all these publications went under laboratory tests. The results showed that these publications contained contamination two times more than what is considered as the permissible standard and in the meantime these publications were not among old archival publications required by the library. She said the same procedure was in force in the previous years as well. For example, the surplus publications in the years 2013, 2017 and 2018 A.D, were annihilated after they went through the mentioned procedures and if they were diagnosed as unusable and worn-out resources. Source: Wikipedia (en)