After several months of silence, officials at the Cultural Heritage Organization have finally revealed this week that a dam built 2500 years ago has been deliberately destroyed.

Achaemenid Dam, known as the “Bostan Khani,” is registered in the Iranian National Heritage List.

The dam was built during the reign of Cyrus the Great, and were preserved until the advent of the Islamic Republic. The remains are now destroyed due to policies of negligence towards non-Shia and non-religious monuments.

The dam was located on a branch of the Pulwar River, near Pasargad. Archaeologists believe that this unique work was designed to contain floods and store large amounts of water for public use as well as use in agriculture and horticulture. In fact, this historic barrier resembles modern engineering systems of water management, i.e. the same engineering and management endeavors that Iran has been lacking during the Islamic Republic due to inability, neglect, and profit-seeking attitudes of government officials.

The Achaemenid Dam, with its iron structures, was once damaged in the seventies by a local landowner, and the remnants of this damage were completely wiped out only recently.

This time, those who destroyed the dam were more equipped with tools such as bulldozers, tractors, loaders, and performed their work in a few days. Cultural Heritage officials say they have not been informed of these actions for a long time.

It is quite clear that, as always, the Cultural Heritage Organization is not ready to share the facts of such cases of the non-religious cultural and historical devastation with the people of Iran.