US President Donald Trump threatened after the assassination of the martyr Hajj Qassem and because of his fear for Iranian retaliation that if Iran responded to strike the US forces, he would bomb Iranian cultural sites.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, in response to Trump's threats, said that attacking cultural sites in Iran would be considered a "war crime" because Iran is one of the ten countries with the largest number of UNESCO World Heritage sites.

The 1954 Hague Convention considers targeting cultural sites a war crime, and the UN Security Council issued a unanimous resolution in 2017 condemning the destruction of heritage sites in response to the attacks of ISIS against heritage sites.

Human Rights Watch condemned Trump's threat regarding Iranian cultural sites and considered that Trump's threat to attack Iranian cultural heritage sites indicates his disregard for international law, noting Trump's refusal to condemn the brutal killing of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, as evidence of his lack for the human rights