The current regime in Iran doesn’t make it easy to collect documents and materials, that’s why it’s important for our program to obtain and preserve as many pieces of history as we can. Our plan is to digitize everything we have acquired and make it available to all future scholars.

From here:

Stanford has amassed thousands of Persian books, official documents, letters, multimedia pieces and other materials related to Iran’s history, politics and culture.

The newest and largest addition to the Iranian archival section at Stanford is a collection of former Iranian diplomat Ardeshir Zahedi’s writings, speeches and correspondence about Iranian foreign relations during the 1960s and 1970s. Zahedi served as an ambassador to the United States and Great Britain and as a minister of foreign affairs in Iran.

The collection also includes rare photos and papers of Zahedi’s father, Fazlollah Zahedi, who was the prime minister of Iran from 1953 to 1955.