When American and British planes bombed the Church of Our Lady in Dresden in 1945, a baroque masterpiece that had stood for two centuries, it was not rebuilt for decades to remind the world of the mindlessness of war. Right now, Israel and the US are bombing sites in Iran older than the age of the two modern nation-states combined. Among the globally significant sites that have faced serious damage are Tehran’s 14th-century Golestan Palace and Isfahan’s 17th-century Chehel Sotoon Palace. In Lebanon, Israel has destroyed parts of the Roman temples in Baalbek and al-Bass necropolis in Tyre. If Unesco is muted in appealing for their protection, Nato countries such as the UK and France, which have ratified the 1954 Hague Convention, must use all their diplomatic heft to protect humanity’s heritage.