Given the increasing vulnerability of cultural heritage during recent armed conflicts and wars in Iran, the protection of war heritage has become one of the fundamental challenges of cultural heritage management. Despite the development of international literature on authenticity, collective memory, local community participation, and post-war reconstruction, these concepts have not yet been integrated into a coherent framework for the protection of war heritage in Iran. Consequently, post-war interventions have predominantly focused on physical reconstruction, while the cultural, social, identity-related, and value-based dimensions of war heritage have received less attention. This gap reveals the necessity of providing a comprehensive framework appropriate to Iran's conditions. The present study seeks to answer how, by drawing on contemporary theoretical foundations of post-conflict heritage protection, an integrated framework for the protection of Iran's war heritage can be formulated. Accordingly, the research aims to critically analyze the existing literature, identify the key dimensions influencing war heritage protection, explain their interrelationships, and provide a conceptual framework applicable to Iran's context. This qualitative study employs a critical-interpretive synthesis approach, drawing on purposive theoretical sampling of selected articles on heritage protection in conflict, authenticity, and post-war reconstruction. Based on this synthesis, the research's conceptual framework was developed.The findings indicate that effective protection of war heritage is not limited to the physical conservation of monuments; rather, it requires the integration of five substantive dimensions: heritage values, authenticity, collective memory, community participation, and sustainable reconstruction, linked through heritage governance as a cross-cutting coordinating mechanism.