Iran cultural heritage threatened, Pentagon reassures: we will follow laws of armed conflict

The U.S. Department of Defense is toning down on threats by President Donald Trump, who had let it be known on the night of Feb. 4-5 that the United States has identified 52 targets to strike in Iran, including some important to Iranian culture. The secretary of defense, Mark T. Esper, and the chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark A. Milley, held a press conference at the Pentagon at which they answered reporters’ questions about the recent escalation of U.S.-Iran tensions.

A reporter asked whether the U.S. really intends to strike cultural sites in Iran, and General Milley merely replied, “We will follow the laws of armed conflict.” When asked for confirmation by the reporter (“that means you will not do it, because hitting a cultural site is a war crime”), Milley reiterated that “that’s how the laws of armed conflicts provide.”

Against Trump’s words the international cultural community had already risen up. Unesco’s calls had been followed yesterday by joint ones from ICOM and ICOMOS, which, recalling how in recent years “cultural heritage has been looted or destroyed to finance war or to strike at the identity and security of adversaries,” remarked on their “condemnation of all deliberate destruction of cultural heritage” (“we call all parties to respect international agreements governing armed conflicts, and to protect the world’s cultural heritage wherever it is found, regardless of religious beliefs or political intentions”), those of the Association of Art Museums (“in the event of hostilities, it will be necessary to protect the cultural heritage of Iran and Iraq”) and those of the World Monuments Fund (“any threat to the cultural heritage, of Iran or any other country, is absolutely unacceptable”).

Also joining the chorus of unanimous condemnation were many museum directors, including the director of the Metropolitan in New York, Max Hollein (“targeting World Heritage sites,” he wrote in a joint note along with Met President Daniel H. Weiss, “is aberrant to the collective values of our society: the world knows what is gained by protecting cultural sites but, tragically, it also knows what is lost when destruction and chaos prevail.”), the director of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, Tristram Hunt (“Just as the destruction of Palmyra and other significant sites by Isis was aberrant, likewise the U.S. government’s threat must be condemned.”), the director of San Francisco’s Fine Arts Museum, Thomas Campbell, former director of the Met (“When the president of the United States subverts every value system for which our nation has always stood, and threatens destructive attacks against one of the world’s oldest civilizations, vehement and urgent speech is required.”)

Pictured: the Pentagon, headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense.

Iran cultural heritage threatened, Pentagon reassures: we will follow laws of armed conflict

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