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[ by Charles Cameron — which cultural heritage sites did you have in mind, Mr Trump? ]
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Persepolis, for instance?

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So?

The Golestan Palace, in the heart of Tehran? The Masjed-e Shah in Isfahan? The Hyrcanian Forests, or Lut Desert? I suppose Trump could bomb the Lut Desert without harming civilians, and wind would soon bring the dunes back into their miraculous order..

Iran has 24 UNESCO World Heritage Sites all told.

Let’s just say that it took ISIS to destroy the Temple of Bel in Palmyra, and the Taliban to demolish the Bamiyan Buddha..

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Of possible legal relevance:

After an al-Qaeda affiliated group destroyed ancient religious monuments in Timbuktu, Mali, in 2012, the International Criminal Court took on a unique criminal case: prosecuting cultural destruction.

Though it generally focuses on human rights violations, the ICC charged the leader of the jihadist group, Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, with a war crime for destroying cultural artifacts in Timbuktu.

The case was the first criminal charge of its kind. It “breaks new ground for the protection of humanity’s shared cultural heritage and values,” UNESCO Secretary-General Irina Bokova said at the time. Al-Mahdi eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Okay, a precedent of sorts has been set.

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BTW, Mike Knights suggests the “best way to make sure Trump does do something you oppose – say bomb cultural sites – is to engage him in a twitter war about it. The way insiders get him to forget about a course of action is to stop mentioning it.”

He did his PhD on “target selection and vetting,” and tells us:

It’s a very laborious, mechanical process for fixed sites, & there is a huge constantly-refined no-strike list. Judge Advocate Generals are involved in all target lists.

Sometimes POTUS crosses red lines and erases norms, sometimes not.

[ by Charles Cameron — “the landscape, in general, is in good shape” says Syrian antiquities chief Abdulkarim ]
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First, let me DoubleQuote the joy and the grief of Palmyra, in the form of the Temple of Bel before —

— and after IS wrought its iconoclastic destruction on that site sacred to its original devotees, and sacred also (seculo-sacred?) to contemporary humanists and historians —

In that pairing of grief and joy, the grief predominates.

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Palmyra, though, has now been retaken from IS, and we can accordingly make a further DoubleQuote in images, this time moving from grief to joy, with the joy predominant, Alhamdulillah! — pairing the “after” image from the previous pair —

— with this image of the theater at Palmyra — recently used by IS for executions, though thankfully not by them demolished —

— thus returning a measure of joy after so tragic an episode.

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Sources:

Daily Mail, ISIS show off their destruction of 2,000-year-old temple at Palmyra

BBC News, Syria civil war: Palmyra damage in pictures