
Vahid Salemi/AP Photo
Iran is home to 24 UNESCO World Heritage sites, including Persepolis, ancient capital of the Achaemenid Empire, northeast of the city of Shiraz.
It takes a special talent to lose a public-relations war with Iran’s theocratic regime, but Donald Trump has proved himself up to the challenge.
By threatening to destroy Iran’s historic cultural sites, dating back to the mists of early Persian times, Trump has created a clear contrast between his vision of war and the one laid out yesterday by Iran’s rulers, which, in reaction to Trump’s folly, included a pledge to focus just on military targets.
The grown-ups have long since fled or been dumped from Trump’s entourage, but even the adolescents remaining have sought to rescind Trump’s declaration of war on civilization. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and various military leaders have scrambled to make clear that we wouldn’t really target cathedrals, artistic masterpieces, and holy relics, which would plainly violate international laws of war, but Trump has doubled down and said we would, too. This byplay has put Esper and his generals in the company of German General Dietrich von Choltitz, the commander of his nation’s occupying force in the French capital in 1944, who refused to act on Hitler’s order to burn Paris before he withdrew his forces before the advancing Allied armies. Of course, it also has put Trump in the company of you-know-who.
To be sure, Trump hasn’t quite gone the full Attila. He has yet to say that American forces should take the enemy’s women to do with as they please. But who can doubt that the cager of small children wouldn’t be up to that challenge as well?