Academic groups on Monday condemned threats by President Trump to attack Iranian cultural sites. Trump said over the weekend that his administration had identified 52 Iranian sites, some of importance to “Iranian culture,” to target for attacks in the event Iran retaliates for the killing of Major General Qassim Suleimani last Friday in an American drone strike. Targeting cultural sites could be a war crime under international laws, but Trump has doubled down on the threat, as The New York Times reported.
“On behalf of more than 50,000 scholars and researchers in the humanities and social sciences, our scholarly and professional societies call upon people throughout the U.S. and, indeed, around the world to remind the President of the United States that targeting cultural sites for military activity is a war crime except under the narrowest of circumstances, and cannot be justified under any circumstances,” says a joint statement from 11 scholarly groups, which variously represent anthropologists, archaeologists and literary scholars.
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