Dear MEL Topic Readers,
In pictures: Iran's sites of cultural
importance
Iran, or Persia, is home to one of the
world's oldest civilizations. It started with the Elamite kingdoms in the
fourth millennium BCE, later followed by the Achaemenid Empire, whose territory
stretched from Eastern Europe to the Indus Valley in the sixth century BCE.
After Arab Muslims conquered the Sasanian
Empire in the seventh century CE, Persia became a major Islamic power and
contributed greatly to art, philosophy, and science in the Muslim world.
After the Islamic Revolution, which ousted
the US-backed King Pahlavi and his administration, it became an Islamic republic
in April 1979. Later in November, a group of Muslim students seized the United
States Embassy and took the embassy with 52 personnel and citizens hostage for
as long as 444 days, demanding the US to extradite Pahlavi to Iran. This
hostage crisis and the supreme leader Khomeini’s anti-West cultural moves lead
to economic sanction by the US and further deteriorate the ties between the two
nations.
Now, the US attacked and assassinated Iran’s a heroic military commander in Iraq, Iran declared that it would no longer abide
by any of the restrictions imposed by the 2015 nuclear deal and retaliate with
“crushing revenge” for the killing of the commander. Then the US president
Donald Trump threatened to respond to any Iranian retaliation by attacking
Iranian cultural sites!
Look at the photos of just a few of Iran’s sites
of cultural importance and think if the US president is about to follow the suit of the Taliban, which dynamited and destroyed the 1,500-year-old Buddhas
of Bamyan in Afghanistan in 2001.
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