Pete Hegseth’s Cultural Genocide
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Hey, speaking of Eurodiaspora nations engaging in cultural genocide, at least Pete Hegesth’s lethality means not giving a shit whether you blow up the astouding UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Iran. After all, why would we want future Iranians–many of whom who loathe the cleric regime–to think that the United States and Israel were anything more than grotesque cultural bullies with the intelligence of a bowl of porridge.
In the city of Isfahan, Israeli airstrikes have damaged several of Iran’s most cherished cultural jewels, Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Heritage said. The Ali Qapu Palace and the Chehel Sotoun palace and garden, dating to the 17th-century Safavid dynasty, sustained serious harm, photos and videos released by the ministry show.
The blast waves on Monday also sent the turquoise tiles of the iconic Jameh Mosque crashing to the ground, with ministry photographs showing a massive plume of smoke rising from behind the mosque. The mosque, with its brightly colored minarets and domes covered in Persian calligraphy, is renowned as a gem of Persian and Islamic architecture.
The strikes on Isfahan on Monday came a week after another cultural icon, the Golestan Palace, was badly damaged during an attack on a police station in downtown Tehran, according to the ministry. Golestan Palace dates to the 14th century and eventually became the seat of the Qajar dynasty. Its famed hall of mirrors was shattered, and its symmetrical garden was covered in debris, photos and videos show.
Israeli military strikes in Isfahan were targeting the governor’s building, which sits near Naqshe Jahan Square, according to Iranian government officials. Many cultural landmarks also sat in close proximity.
The images of renowned historic sites shattered by missiles has left many Iranians enraged. In interviews and in posts on social media, some are asking how a war waged by Israel and the United States supposedly against the Islamic republic’s government and military has ended up damaging their cultural identity and sites.
“For me, ancient monuments are as important as human lives, because they connect me to my past,” Mojtaba Najafi, a prominent Iranian scholar and researcher, said in one post. “And their destruction means my memory is being demolished.”
A spokeswoman for UNESCO, the United Nations agency that seeks to protect global culture, said her organization had been able to verify damage at several World Heritage sites in Iran. They include the Golestan Palace; the Chehel Sotoun pavilion of the Persian Garden, the Masjed‑e Jameh of Isfahan, as well as on buildings located near the buffer zone of the prehistoric sites of the Khorramabad Valley.
But hey, at least all this destruction is for….wait what is the stated reason of the day for this war?