US–Israel Strikes Damage Iranian Cultural Sites
Airstrikes by US and Israeli forces from March 2026 damaged Iranian cultural heritage at a scale Iran's officials later put at 149 historic sites and museums across 20 provinces, Tehran hardest hit. Blast waves broke windows and mirrorwork at Golestan Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, whose collection had been moved to storage in advance. Israel called the damage collateral. The destruction reopened debate over the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, which prohibits military attacks on cultural property, and marked one of the starkest superpower-level violations of heritage protection norms in the modern era, occurring simultaneously with the US withdrawal from UNESCO, the international body nominally responsible for enforcing such protections.
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