Iran’s Minister of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts, Reza Salehi-Amiri, sent an urgent official letter to the Director-General of UNESCO.

In the letter, Tehran expressed deep concern over threats by the “infanticidal regime” and the United States to carry out strikes on the country’s railway network, which is officially recognized as a World Heritage Site, IRNA reports.

In his appeal, the minister emphasized that any attacks on the Trans-Iranian Railway would constitute open aggression against the shared cultural and engineering heritage of humanity. Iran called on the international community to take immediate and deterrent action.

“The Trans-Iranian Railway is not just a transport facility; it is an outstanding masterpiece of architecture and engineering, created through decades of joint work by Iranian and European specialists,” the minister’s letter states.

Salehi-Amiri reminded UNESCO of the undisputed facts confirming the site’s status:

In 2021, at the 44th session of the World Heritage Committee in China, the railway was inscribed on the UNESCO list with full consensus among participating countries.

According to IRNA, the railway connects the Caspian Sea in the north with the Persian Gulf in the south, passing through complex mountain ranges and landscapes, making it a unique monument of modern engineering in Western Asia.

The site represents a synthesis of Iranian traditions and Western technologies of that time.