Six-millennia civilization shields Iran from misjudgments, says heritage chief
Iran’s head of the Research Institute for Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts said on Tuesday that foreign powers misjudge Iran’s resilience by ignoring its 6,000-year civilizational depth, during a Tehran expert session on recent regional tensions.
Mohammad Ebrahim Zarei said attackers who “bypass international law” and strike Iranian territory are operating under a “strategic miscalculation,” assuming Iran resembles modern states with shallow historical roots, CHTN reported.
“They think they are dealing with a country of 50 or 100 years, while Iran carries at least five to six millennia of administrative and civilizational continuity,” he said. Zarei argued that external actors, lacking comparable civilizational foundations, mistakenly believe that destroying fortresses and heritage sites can erase Iran’s identity. History, he said, has repeatedly disproved this logic, as invasions over millennia damaged monuments but failed to fracture societal continuity.
Drawing historical parallels, he contrasted Iran’s cultural endurance with empires such as the Assyrians, which relied on destruction and coercion and ultimately disappeared beyond name.
By contrast, he cited Cyrus the Great’s governance in Babylon as an example of a Persian tradition rooted in tolerance, order and respect for local populations, which helped sustain Iranian cultural influence.
Zarei also highlighted a newly announced restructuring of the “Architectural and Urban Heritage” division, framing it as more than an academic field and instead as a pillar of national identity and survival architecture.
He acknowledged recent destruction of heritage sites in several cities as painful but said such losses cannot sever the civilizational roots of Iranian society. “These foundations are continuously regenerated even under pressure,” he said.
The session concluded with the launch of a special issue of a quarterly titled “War and Cultural Heritage,” marking expanded research priorities in architectural and urban heritage as a strategic cultural asset.