Iran puts 19 historical treasures on sale to reduce its debt

Iran is putting up some of its oldest historical treasures up for an online auction on May 22 to reduce state debt in the face of crippling sanctions, according to UK Times newspaper published on Monday.

This decision has been condemned by experts, Mohammad Gharipour, one of Iran’s leading architectural historians, said the plan was “extremely worrisome and appears to have been hastily made.”

The Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicraft will be through the auction, which will include Rayen Castle, an adobe castle 100 kilometers south of Kerman province, Iran. It is situated on the outskirts of the Hezar Masjed Mountains.

Rayen castle of Kerman, internationally registered as the second largest adobe castle after Bam Citadel, is one of those structures that take you in the magnificence of this brick and mud fortress.

The Rayen Castle is approximately a quarter of Arg-e Bam with an area of 22,000 square metres and has about 4.5 hectares of land around the structure. The Rayen Castle is a rectangular structure in shape, made of mudbrick.

Furthermore, Iran also proposes to sell some of its islands and the oil-rich province of Khuzestan to raise funds, along with many other government assets that didn’t mentioned yet.

It is worth mentioning that the Iranian rial has recently fallen to historic lows, driven by sanctions and also by popular protests that began since the death of young Kurdish woman Mehsa Amini in mid-September 2022.