Iran’s Minister of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, Reza Salehi Amiri, said on April 1 that US-Israeli air strikes have damaged or destroyed 56 museums, monuments, and historic sites across the country in the 32 days since the war began on February 28. Amiri described the destruction as worse than the damage Iran’s cultural patrimony sustained during the entire eight-year Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, and accused the US-Israeli coalition of waging a “deliberate war” on Iranian identity.
The minister’s statement, delivered at an emergency press conference in Tehran, provided the most comprehensive official accounting to date of the conflict’s toll on Iran’s cultural landscape.
Golestan Palace and Isfahan
Among the sites Amiri identified as severely damaged is the Golestan Palace in Tehran, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the oldest buildings in the Iranian capital. The palace complex, which dates to the Qajar dynasty and served as the seat of government for more than two centuries, was reportedly struck during a wave of air attacks targeting government buildings in central Tehran. Amiri said parts of the palace’s ornate mirror hall and tilework facades have been “devastated beyond recognition.”
We are not talking about stone and mortar. We are talking about the memory and history of a people. This stone represents who we are.
In Isfahan — a city whose historic centre is itself a UNESCO World Heritage Site — Amiri reported damage to both the Chehel Sotoun Palace, a 17th-century Safavid pavilion known for its painted ceilings and columned hall, and the Masjed-e Jame, one of Iran’s oldest mosques, with architectural elements spanning more than a thousand years. The minister did not specify whether the Isfahan sites were directly targeted or damaged by strikes on nearby military or government installations.
The 56 sites catalogued by the ministry include provincial museums, archaeological monuments, caravanserais, and historic bridges. Amiri said the ministry is still compiling a complete damage assessment and that the final number is expected to be higher.
‘A Total Collapse of the Rules’
Amiri framed the destruction in terms that went beyond material loss, describing it as an assault on Iran’s civilisational continuity and collective identity.
What we see today is a total collapse of the moral and legal rules that used to govern conflicts.
He referenced the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which prohibits the targeting of cultural heritage sites and requires belligerent parties to take precautions to avoid damage to such sites. Both the United States and Iran are parties to the convention, though the US ratified it only in 2009 and has attached reservations regarding military necessity.
The 1954 Hague Convention
Amiri said his ministry had formally notified UNESCO of the damage and requested an emergency session of the organisation’s World Heritage Committee. He criticised UNESCO for what he called its “silence” since the war began, saying the organisation had issued no public statement condemning the destruction of Iranian heritage sites.
“The institutions that were created to protect the heritage of humanity have said nothing,” Amiri told reporters. “Their silence is complicity.”
UNESCO did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The organisation has previously stated that it monitors reports of damage to World Heritage Sites during armed conflicts and has called for all parties to respect international humanitarian law.
Irreversible Damage
Amiri acknowledged that some of the destruction cannot be undone regardless of the resources committed to restoration after the war.
Restoration, no matter how perfect, can never return an artefact to its starting point. Every crack is a permanent scar.
He said the ministry has deployed more than 300 heritage experts, conservators, and archaeologists to affected sites across the country. Their immediate tasks include documenting damage through photography and 3D scanning, stabilising structures at risk of further collapse, and retrieving movable artefacts from damaged museums. Some collections had been relocated to storage facilities before the strikes, but Amiri said the speed and geographic scope of the air campaign made it impossible to protect everything.
Iran possesses 27 UNESCO World Heritage Sites and dozens of entries on the organisation’s tentative list. Its cultural heritage spans more than 5,000 years, encompassing Achaemenid, Sassanid, Islamic, and modern-era monuments.
The Iran-Iraq War Comparison
Amiri’s comparison to the Iran-Iraq War is significant. During that conflict, which lasted from 1980 to 1988, Iraqi forces damaged several important heritage sites, particularly in the western provinces of Khuzestan and Kermanshah. However, the geographical scope of the destruction was more limited, concentrated along the border region and front lines.
The current conflict, by contrast, has involved air strikes across Iran’s territory, including in cities that were far from any front line during the Iran-Iraq War. Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz — the cultural heartlands of the country — have all been targeted.
A Question of Intent
Amiri stopped short of providing specific evidence that cultural sites were deliberately targeted, but his language left little ambiguity about Iran’s official position.
They believe that by destroying our monuments, they can weaken our resolve. But while you can destroy the stone, you cannot bomb the faith a people have in their land.
The United States has not publicly commented on the damage to Iranian cultural sites. In previous conflicts, Washington has maintained that its targeting procedures include assessments designed to avoid cultural heritage sites, consistent with its obligations under the Hague Convention. The Pentagon’s no-strike list — a classified database of sites that are not to be targeted — typically includes World Heritage Sites and other significant cultural properties.
Whether the damage to Iran’s heritage sites resulted from deliberate targeting, proximity to legitimate military objectives, or failures in the targeting process is a question that cannot be definitively answered with the information currently available. Independent verification of Amiri’s claims is not possible while the conflict is ongoing and international observers do not have access to the affected sites.
What is not in dispute is that the war is taking a toll on one of the world’s oldest and richest cultural landscapes — and that whatever is lost will not be fully recovered.
This article is based on statements from Iran’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, UNESCO conventions, and reporting by BBC, Al Jazeera, and Reuters. WarEcho maintains editorial independence and does not endorse the positions of any party to the conflict.