The News Section

LONDON, (CAIS) -- The Islamic Republic vice president who is also the director of Iran’s Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organisation (ICHTO) has threatened to cease the cooperation between the National Museum in Tehran and the British Museum in London, if the Cyrus the Great Cylinder is not loaned to Iran, reported the Persian service of the Aryan Heritage (Miras-e Ariya) on Wednesday. 

While visiting the Iran’s National Museum, Hamid Baqaee told journalists: “The BM uses the current political situation in Iran as an excuse not to loan the cylinder to the National Museum.” 

He continued “If the BM continues creating different excuses for not loaning the artefact to NM, we will cease cooperation in the field of archaeological expeditions and research with them.” 

The Islamic Republic back in 2005, requested the BM to loan the Cyrus the Great Cylinder for a limited period of time to Iran for an exhibition. 

The cylinder is considered by many researchers and historians as the world’s first charter of human rights, and has a special place in the hearts and minds of Iranian peoples. 

The Islamic republic since coming to power in 1979 has been waging a war against pre-Islamic Iran and in particular the figure of Cyrus the Great. The request for the loan is however raising suspicion inside and outside Iran, as to why the clerical regime who insults the man who Iranians consider him as “The Father of the Iranian nation” as a “homosexual-Jew-Lover”; - or builds a dam so close to the Cyrus’s capital to ensure its destruction within few decades; – or calling the discovered bones in the cavity of the ceiling of his mausoleum as the “bones of a dog”; destroy Iran’s national heritage under the guise of developments, wishes to borrow this invaluable artefact. 

Many believe this irreplaceable artefact should not be loaned to Iran, as its safety is impossible to guarantee.