About 73 relics were returned to Iran on Monday by the United States government, the Foreign Ministry announced in a statement. The artifacts were handed over to the National Museum of Iran, Borna news agency reported. The return of the smuggled artifacts, which date back to the Sassanid era (224 – 651) is the result of months of discussion between the two sides. Further details were not available. A large haul of Iran’s stolen artifacts have been restituted over the past two years. A shipment of 349 ancient relics was returned to Iran from Belgium in December 2014 – after 33 years - following a ruling by a Belgian court. In April 2015, over 100 historical artifacts taken from the archeological site of Choghamish in Khuzestan Province were returned by the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, after The Hague ruled in favor of Iran and obliged the US to restitute the objects. And in July 2015, the government in Rome returned a shipment of 30 Pre-Islamic-era relics an.
