Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump's threat to destroy some of Iran's treasured cultural sites if the country retaliates for the killing of Gen. Qasem Soleimani has generated criticism on how a move like this would violate international law and amount to a war crime.

What the conversation has often missed, however, is why strikes in this vein are such a big deal: The damage inflicted chips away at the very identities and histories of their targets.

The tomb of Cyrus II of Persia, known as Cyrus the Great.

The US is a signatory of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict , adopted in the aftermath of a war during which heritage sites were looted and destroyed on a jaw-dropping scale.

More importantly, these signatories were "convinced that damage to cultural property belonging to any people whatsoever means damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind, since each people makes its contribution to the culture of the world." (The US Defense Department Law of War manual says that "acts of hostility may be directed against cultural property, its immediate surroundings, or appliances in use for its protection when military necessity imperatively requires such acts.")

Preserving cultural artifacts speaks to a vital kind of world-building. This work can, in its own way, ratify the existence of a variety of people, afford them dignity and help them to recover in the wake of tragedy.