US, Israel Accused of Waging War on Iranian Culture
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- US and Israeli strikes have damaged at least 56 heritage sites, 30 universities, and 55 libraries in Iran since the war began on February 28, according to Iranian government data and local media reports.
- Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary girls' school in Minab was struck on the war's first day, killing at least 170 people — mostly girls aged 7 to 12; independent investigations by Al Jazeera and Amnesty International concluded a US-manufactured Tomahawk missile was likely used.
- Iran's Culture Minister Reza Salehi Amiri called the destruction a "deliberate and conscious attack" on Iranian identity, while UNESCO confirmed it had shared the geographic coordinates of all heritage sites with warring parties before the conflict began.
- Strikes hit major cultural landmarks including the Qajar-era Golestan Palace, Tehran's Grand Bazaar, the 17th-century Chehel Sotoun Palace in Isfahan, and the Masjed-e Jame — Iran's oldest Friday mosque, whose construction spans 12 centuries.
- On April 6, 2026, US-Israeli attacks struck Sharif University of Technology in Tehran; Iran's First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref accused the US of deploying a "bunker-buster" bomb, calling it "a symbol of Trump's madness and ignorance."
- Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group told Al Jazeera the attacks aim to prevent reconstruction and turn Iran — a nation of 92 million — into a failed state, though he added a "civilisation that has survived several millennia cannot be erased with aerial bombardment."
- The US and Israel have a documented history of similar attacks: the 2003 looting of Baghdad's Iraq Museum, the arson destruction of more than 90 percent of the Iraq National Library's rare books, and Israel's destruction or damage of nearly 200 heritage sites in Gaza since October 2023.
Why it matters: The systematic targeting of schools, universities, libraries, and millennia-old heritage sites — including a girls' school strike that killed at least 170 — suggests a deliberate campaign to degrade Iran's ability to rebuild, not just strike military targets. For 92 million Iranians, the destruction of Qajar-era palaces, 12th-century mosques, and leading research centers represents an irreversible cultural wound that even UNESCO's pre-war sharing of site coordinates failed to prevent.
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