It appears that elusive felines are behind a new bridge being built between two hostile governments. The governments, you ask? That would be Iran and the USA.

Iran is believed to host the only 60 – 100 Asiatic cheetahs left in the wild. Some eke out a living in a forbidding terrain of jagged peaks, deep gorges and bone-dry plains in the Kuh-e Bafgh protected area in Yazd province in central Iran.

The sleek and spotted cats once roamed between the Arabian peninsula and India, but their number in Iran is estimated to have fallen by roughly half in the last three decades.

Kooshki, an Asiatic cheetah captured by a poacher as a cub and rescued by the Department of Environment, shown via these three photos, is in his enclosure at the Pardisan Zoo in Tehran on June 18, 2008.

Iranian and Western wildlife experts are working together to save rare cheetahs from extinction in this arid, mountainous region, despite a nuclear row between their governments.

For more see, here/Photos by Caren Firouz.