Iran and Israel have taken urgent steps to protect their cultural heritage amid escalating military hostilities, including air strikes on Tehran and Tel Aviv. Iran's Cultural Heritage Organization transferred museum artifacts to secure storage and closed all museums and heritage sites, with deputy minister Ali Darabi directing custodians to follow crisis protocols. Israeli institutions, including the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, removed artworks from display to underground facilities and closed indefinitely, following Iran's retaliatory strikes on Tel Aviv.
This matters because the conflict threatens irreplaceable cultural treasures, including Iran's 28 UNESCO World Heritage sites and major collections such as those at the Iranian National Museum and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, which holds works by Monet and Picasso. The Society for Iranian Archaeology has called on UNESCO, Blue Shield, and ICOMOS to monitor the situation, warning that intentional destruction of cultural property constitutes a war crime under international humanitarian law. The crisis underscores the vulnerability of cultural heritage in armed conflict and the need for coordinated international protection.