The Chalice that Helped US Make a Deal, Again

Carolina Miranda, 'Culture Wars', Los Angeles Times 11th Jan 2020:

After ordering the assassination of a top Iranian general, President Trump took to Twitter to threaten to strike cultural sites if Iran retaliated (a comment from which he later retreated). But the statement ignited a media storm since attacking cultural monuments could be considered a war crime. Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, told New York Times art critic Jason Farago that “threatening cultural sites in Iran is to reduce Western values to those of ISIS fanatics.” Los Angeles Times reporters Melissa Etehad and Sarah Parvini take a broader look at how culture can be held hostage by political whim — including a fascinating story about the ancient silver chalice that ended up functioning as a diplomatic tool between the U.S. and Iran, and helped pave the way to a nuclear deal in 2013. 

 That 'chalice' (scil. rhyton) seized in the US from a collector who'd bought it from a US-based dealer that helped make possible the Iran nuclear deal between Iran and an (it turns out now) entirely insincere USA was, in the opinion of a number of experts, a fake. Each time I come across its photo again, the more ridiculous it looks.