Wars have continuously changed the course of history, and victors hold the sword and the pen to provide the future generations a narrative laden with purported justifications, and righteous causes. When it specifically comes to wars between countries whose people pursue different faiths, this rewriting is often done by erasing and repurposing cultural monuments (religious or secular).
Recent decades have shown that modern warfare has been somewhat crueller to mute monuments. Beginning with the Taliban's cannonading of the nearly 2,000 years old statues of the Buddha in Bamiyan province in 2001 and similar acts by Daesh (also known as Islamic State) in Palmyra, the destruction of culture or culturicide has been a feature of wars particularly those in West Asia and north Africa.
The targeting of cultural monuments during armed conflict is not merely condemned by international norms, it constitutes a war crime. Iran, Israel, and the United States are all signatories to international conventions obligating the protection of cultural heritage even in wartime.
Behind each number lies a monument, an archive, a mosque, a palace, some standing for centuries, others for millennia, reduced in a matter of seconds to rubble or ruin. The full accounting, when it finally comes, will almost certainly be worse.
The cities that absorbed the heaviest bombardment: Tehran, Isfahan and others, are not merely urban centres but living repositories of Persian imperial history.
The loss of Iranian civilisational history is a devastating blow, with over 130 sites damaged, including the 18th century Golestan palace in Tehran, and the 16th century Safavid splendour in the great friday mosque the Jame Abbasi in Isfahan.
