Dismay over damage to ancient heritage sites across Iran in US-Israeli bombing | Iran

The governor of the historic Iranian city of Isfahan accused the US and Israel of “declaring war on civilisation” as heritage sites across the country were damaged in the bombing campaign.

The most serious damage confirmed so far was to the Golestan Palace in Tehran, dating from the 14th century, and the 17th-century Chehel Sotun Palace in Isfahan.

Judging from videos and public statements, none of the historic buildings were directly attacked by a missile, but the shock wave from nearby explosions and possibly some missile debris shattered glass and brought down tiles and masonry.

Video from the scene showed that Golestan Palace’s famous Hall of Mirrors had been shattered, with shards of intricate mirrors scattered across its floor.

The palace is a World Heritage site under the protection of the United Nations cultural body, UNESCO, which issued a statement expressing its concern after it was damaged on March 2, saying it had “informed all concerned parties of the geographical coordinates of the sites included in the World Heritage List.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi criticized UNESCO for not being more vocal, saying on social media: “Its silence is unacceptable.”

Araqchi blamed the damage on Israel, which he accused of “bombing Iranian historical monuments dating back to the 14th century.”

He added on the X program: “It is natural that a regime that will not last a century hates countries with an ancient past.”

One of the damaged sites was Falak Al-Aflak Castle in the city of Khorramabad in Lorestan Province. According to the head of the province’s heritage administration, Ata Hassanpour, a raid hit the vicinity of the citadel on Sunday, destroying its administration offices as well as the nearby archaeological and anthropological museums, and wounding five employees.

“Fortunately, the main structure of Falak al-Aflak Castle was not damaged,” Hasanpour said in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging platform.

Local media reported that cultural treasures in the Kurdistan region in northwestern Iran were also affected. In Sanandaj, the country’s second-largest Kurdish city, the 19th-century Salar Said and Asif Vaziri palaces, which serve as Kurdish museums and heritage sites, reportedly suffered damage to their intricate stained glass doors and windows.

The past few days have witnessed major explosions in the center of the city of Isfahan, the capital of Iran, in three historical eras, as much of the architecture dates back to the era of the Safavid dynasty, from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth century.

Chehel Sotoun suffered the worst of the impacts, but windows and doors were reported to have been smashed, as well as tiles being dislodged, in Ali Qapu Palace and several mosques around the vast Naqsh-e Jahan Square. Videos filmed by residents from inside the square showed plumes of smoke rising from nearby airstrikes.

Isfahan Governor Mehdi Jamali Nejad said the damage occurred even after the coordinates of the historical sites were distributed between the warring parties and after Blue Shield signs – which designate historical treasures under the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in War – were placed on the roofs of important buildings.

Jamali Nejad said in a speech published on social media: “Isfahan is not an ordinary city. It is a museum without a roof.” “It did not happen in any of the previous eras, neither in the wars of Afghanistan, nor in the Mongol conquest, nor even during the ‘Sacred Defence’.” [the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war] Has this ever been done?

He added: “This is a declaration of war on civilization.” “An enemy that does not have a culture does not care about the symbols of culture. A country that does not have a history does not respect the signs of history. A country that does not have an identity does not give value to identity.”

An Iranian geologist who worked in Isfahan for many years said in a letter to The Guardian that the ancient capital was particularly vulnerable.

“Isfahan has long been attacked from below, by land subsidence that destroyed Safavid-era structures, and now from above, by the Americans,” the geologist said. “It seems that Isfahan’s friends are fewer in number today than ever before.”

The US Blue Shield Committee, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the Hague Convention, issued a statement saying that historical sites in Iran “belong not only to the Iranian people, but to all of humanity.”

The organization said that it was “disturbed” by the US Secretary of Defense’s announcement, on the third day of the war, that there would be no “dumb” rules of engagement, and warned that ignoring international and American laws related to the conduct of hostilities could lead to “committing war crimes.”

“The destruction of cultural heritage is irreversible,” the statement said. “It erases the identity, history and shared memory of civilizations. No military or political objective justifies the deliberate destruction or neglect of the common heritage of humanity.”