TEHRAN – An Iranian archaeologist, Sonia Shidrang, highlighted in a global webinar hosted by the International Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management (ICAHM), a scientific committee under ICOMOS, that the 40-day war with the United States and the Israeli regime left 149 historical sites across 20 provinces damaged, and that Iran's cultural heritage now demands a response grounded in international law, rigorous documentation, and a concrete protection plan.

The ICAHM Webinars 2026 took place on Sep. 30, chaired by Matt Whincop, ICAHM Secretary General, and focused on the theme "From Vulnerability to Resilience: Protecting Cultural Heritage from Natural and Anthropogenic Disasters."

The program featured two speakers addressing heritage protection from complementary angles. Professor Hatice Pamir from the Department of Archaeology of Mustafa Kemal University, Turkey, presented "Earthquakes and the Archaeological Heritage of Antioch on the Banks of the Orontes River: Lessons Learnt from Fieldwork," focusing on seismic threats to archaeological sites.

Shidrang followed with "Iranian Cultural Heritage Under Fire: Documentation, Risk, and a Plan for Protection," examining conflict-related risks and strategies for safeguarding heritage. Together, the talks spanned both natural and human-induced disasters, reflecting the webinar's central concern with building resilience for cultural heritage.

Shidrang, a faculty member at Shahid Beheshti University, opened with a reminder that heritage is not merely about ancient monuments. "It is about identity. It is about memory. It is about the shared story of humanity," she said, adding that war's direct and indirect effects on tangible and intangible cultural heritage are irreversible and irreparable.

According to the Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, the joint US-Israeli military campaign that began on February 28, 2026, severely damaged districts, houses, prominent buildings, museums, and cultural sites. The Ministry has called the destruction "a clear violation of international law" and "a threat against the historical memory of humanity."

Among the damaged sites are five UNESCO World Heritage properties: the Golestan Palace in Tehran, the Naqsh-e Jahan Square complex and Imam Mosque in Isfahan, and the Trans-Iranian Railway, which was struck at five stations on the final night of the conflict.

Shidrang anchored her presentation in the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, noting that Iran is a State Party to the Convention and its Protocols. She cited Article 3, which requires states to prepare in peacetime to safeguard cultural property, and said the Ministry moved valuable artifacts to secure storage and installed protective coverings before and during the war. She also pointed to Article 4(1), which obligates parties to refrain from any act of hostility directed against cultural property; Article 6, which provides for the Blue Shield emblem to mark protected sites; Article 7, which requires respect for cultural property to be integrated into military regulations; and the 1999 Second Protocol, which establishes individual criminal responsibility for violations. Iran, she noted, installed Blue Shield markers on museums and historic buildings. "The distinctive emblem has legal force under Article 6 only if parties are aware of it and choose to respect it," she said.

The scale of the destruction, according to the Ministry's latest estimates by early summer, included five UNESCO World Heritage sites, seven historical fabrics, and 54 museums damaged to varying degrees. 74 sites were damaged by blast waves, 42 by strikes on their buffer zones, and 33 by direct strikes on their premises. Tehran Province ranks first with 83 damaged sites, nearly half of the total; of these, 36 are inscribed on the National Heritage List, and six were completely destroyed, including the Rafi Nia Synagogue and the Pasteur Institute. Isfahan Province ranks second with 27 sites, followed by Kurdistan with 13, Khuzestan with 12, Kermanshah with five, Lorestan with four, Qom with three, and other provinces with 15. The financial estimate of damage, initially calculated at approximately €27.08 billion, has now risen to €36.10 billion, with more than €7.22 billion of that representing damage to the Golestan and Sa'dabad Palace complexes alone.

The Golestan Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was severely damaged on March 1, 2026, when an Israeli missile struck a nearby building in the Grand Bazaar. The Shams-ol-Emareh structure was hit, and the head of the Marble Throne statue was severed. The Tehran Grand Bazaar was also severely damaged. The Sa'dabad Palace complex was hit by five bunker-buster bombs on March 16, 2026, collapsing roofs and walls across three palaces, shattering 6,000 square meters of glass, and causing structural failure at the Omidvar Brothers Museum.

Despite the destruction, Iran was not passive. On the first day of the war, the National Museum of Iran transferred all movable objects from its exhibition halls to secure storage and then protected large, immovable objects in place. Fire-resistant thermal insulation was wrapped around artifacts, sandbag walls were erected, and metal framing reinforced them against shrapnel and heat.

Shidrang said that, according to the Iranian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, emergency protection is now complete, with buildings prioritized by age and structural strength. As of this summer, emergency restoration had been completed at 10 sites, including the Golestan Palace, Sa'dabad Palace, the Glassware Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, along with two buildings in West Azerbaijan and several sites in Isfahan, Zanjan, and Qom. Restoration is underway at 21 sites, including the Museum of Decorative Arts and Chehel Sotoun Palace in Isfahan and the Khosrowabad and Moshir Mansions in Kurdistan. Documentation for structural reinforcement of the Blue Dome of Maragheh has been completed, documentation of Baba Taher's Tomb in Hamadan is in progress, and debris-clearing of the Falak al-Aflak buffer zone in Lorestan has been completed by military institutions.

The Secretary-General of the Iranian National Commission for UNESCO has reported the compilation of several thousand pages of documentation concerning damage sustained by the nation's educational and cultural infrastructure and cultural heritage during the recent wars. He further stated that, through UNESCO's follow-up, a number of countries—including Japan and South Korea—have signaled their readiness to contribute to the reconstruction of Iran's cultural heritage, with some €2.5 million in assistance having been pledged.

Shidrang also pointed to reports showing that, from the first days, the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, initiated extensive consultations and correspondence with international bodies, issuing six statements and nine letters to organizations including UNESCO, the International Council of Museums (ICOM), ICOMOS, and the World Tourism Organization. UNESCO, ICOMOS, and ICOM were informed of the details of the damage and condemned the attacks. ICOMOS condemned the destruction "whether intentional or incidental" and recalled that cultural heritage must not be considered a target, while ICOM called on all parties to comply with their obligations under the 1954 Hague Convention and its Protocols. Iran has cited international legal instruments including the 1954 Hague Convention, the 1972 World Heritage Convention, the 2003 Intangible Heritage Convention, UN Security Council Resolution 2347, and legal mechanisms related to the Hague Tribunal. However, despite these efforts, no adequate response was given to Iran's requests for international assistance for reconstruction.

Based on the 1954 Hague Convention and the current situation, Dr. Shidrang proposed a five-point protection plan. The first point calls for accelerating Blue Shield implementation and enforcement, accompanied by formal notification to all parties through UNESCO and the 1954 Hague Convention Secretariat, because the distinctive emblem has legal force under Article 6 only if parties are aware of it and choose to respect it. The second calls for safe haven and evacuation protocols, extending protective covering, sandbagging, and structural reinforcement to immovable heritage where possible and invoking the International Register of Cultural Property under Special Protection under Article 8 for the most significant sites. The third calls for a no-strike list and military coordination, formalizing UNESCO-provided coordinates into a no-strike list communicated through military channels, with Article 7 specialist personnel embedded in command structures to advise on cultural property protection and with the "military necessity" exception interpreted narrowly and documented transparently. The fourth calls for emergency funding and technical support, with UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICCROM, and the Blue Shield establishing a joint emergency fund for immediate stabilization, documentation, and conservation—not as a matter of politics, she said, but to fulfill the obligation to protect the cultural heritage of all humanity. The fifth calls for legal accountability and monitoring, documenting the damage for future legal proceedings before the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, or other mechanisms, and establishing a standing monitoring mechanism—perhaps a joint UNESCO-ICOMOS-ICOM task force—to receive, verify, and publish reports on cultural heritage damage in the conflict zone.

The session, chaired by ICAHM Secretary General Matt Whincop, concluded with an exchange regarding the future of Iranian heritage management within the international arena. As the international community continues to grapple with the protection of the world’s shared past, the collaborative efforts exemplified by the webinar highlighted the vital necessity of fostering institutional partnerships.

AM