How Iran's universities became a target of US-Israeli attacks

No casualties were reported, but multiple buildings - notably those housing an artificial intelligence centre - were damaged. Often likened to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US, Sharif University of Technology is decades old. It is widely regarded as one of the leading engineering schools in West Asia. Among its alumni is Maryam Mirzakhani, who became the first woman and the first Iranian to be awarded the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics, in 2014. The university’s president said the targeted artificial intelligence centre housed critical databases, and that its staff had spent the last two years training AI models in Persian. US sanctions have cut Iran off from global AI research knowledge, so Iranians have done it all on their own. But now, most of its equipment was destroyed, said Amirhossein, a student who worked at the centre. “We were developing data processing services and knowledge-based platforms for universities across the country,” he told Middle East Eye, stressing that the centre had no military connection. “Attacks like this suggest the goal is to push Iran backwards scientifically.” Morteza, a 42-year-old philosophy of science student at the university, said he could not bring himself to see the damage to the campus firsthand. “Even seeing the images has been very upsetting,” he told MEE. But in the attack’s immediate aftermath, academics and students - whose work has long been plagued by US sanctions before bombs began dropping on their workplaces and classrooms - have responded with defiance. Students are resuming their classes via patchy internet connections. Footage of a mathematics professor setting up his laptop in the bombed-out shell of his classroom to hold an online lecture circulated on social media. In a post on X, Mohammad Reza Aref, Iran’s first vice president, accused the US of dropping a bunker buster bomb on the university. He said that Trump “fails to understand that Iran’s knowledge is not embedded in concrete to be destroyed by bombs; the true fortress is the will of our professors and elites”. Disregard for international law The strike on Sharif University follows a string of attacks targeting research centres. During the US-Israeli war on Iran, academic institutions, among them the country’s top technological and engineering universities, increasingly became targets of strikes. Iran’s science and technology ministry reported that at least 30 universities have come under fire. According to the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES), at least 16 universities and research centres have sustained damage. On 28 March, the Iran University of Science and Technology, founded in 1929 in order to train engineers, was struck in a US-Israeli attack, local media reported. The extent of the damage and the number of casualties remain unclear. A day later, Isfahan University of Technology (IUT), one of the country’s most prestigious engineering universities, was attacked for a second time. Iran's Fars News Agency reported that several of its buildings sustained damage, while four members of staff were wounded. Tehran IVF clinic devastated by US-Israeli attack as hospitals and homes hit Read More » IUT produced the country’s national radar project and designed and implemented the first Iranian submarine. In 2015, Sharif University and IUT were ranked 40 and 63, respectively, in the Times Higher Education’s rankings of the top 100 world universities under 50 years of age. On 2 April, a missile struck the century-old Pasteur Institute of Iran, a key public health and research facility, reducing its vaccine-producing laboratories to rubble. Days later, a plasma and laser research lab at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran was also hit. Other targets included an IVF clinic at Tehran’s Ghandi Hospital, which was struck in early March. A couple who had been trying to conceive for a decade previously told MEE that they did not know what had happened to their samples. Missile strikes have also targeted individual faculty members. Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency reported that Dr Saeed Shamghadri, an associate professor at the electrical engineering department at IUT, was killed in an air strike along with his family on 22 March. Lewis Turner, chair of the BRISMES Committee on Academic Freedom, said the pattern of attacks recalls the trend in Israel’s assault on Gaza, which saw the enclave’s education system largely eradicated. “There appears to be a widespread disregard for universities’ protected status under intentional law,” Turner told MEE. “These actions may well amount to war crimes”. Turner warned that the damage to Iran's academic community would be felt years down the line. “How many generations will be denied access to education because of the damage to university infrastructure?” he said. “Because of the roles that universities play within society for the progress of knowledge... this kind of destruction is going to have potentially long-term and profound effects on Iranian society”. ‘The real target is the ability to think’ Rather than having any military connections, the targeted institutions share one thing: they all house scientific and technological research centres. A fact that students like Morteza and Amirhossein are keenly aware of. “Can someone explain why philosophy of science should be targeted?” Morteza said. “Is the problem with philosophy or with science itself? “It feels like the real target is the ability to think.” The attacks come after decades of economic sanctions, which have stifled Iran’s academics by restricting international collaborations and barring students from travelling to attend conferences. “Not having connections with international universities is difficult; it means students cannot even go to a summer school abroad or on exchanges,” Reza Sohrabi, a research fellow at the University of Tehran, told MEE. Sanctions have also reportedly prompted some editors to reject papers from Iranian medical practitioners, while some scientists have reported experiencing problems with paying for society subscriptions and event registration. “Can someone explain why philosophy of science should be targeted? Is the problem with philosophy or with science itself?” - Morteza, philosophy of science student Iranian students have also been grappling with their institutions being under attack and are forced to rely on unstable internet connections to continue their work. “It's not easy to study and work and research during a war. I'm trying to produce my thesis and dissertation and other papers,” Sohrabi said. “But then it's not easy, because you need various resources such as the internet. I used to go to the library to study, but it is closed because of the war.” Asama Abdi, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, emphasised that the attacks are an attempt to finish the work the sanctions could not accomplish and roll back Iranian technological development. “These universities have long been the backbone of knowledge production in Iran as well as of industrial development, and technological advancement,” Abdi told MEE. “Whatever technological capabilities could not be disabled and curtailed through sanctions are now being completely annihilated through bombardment. “It is a longer, indeed colonial, pattern of attempting to sabotage knowledge sovereignty and technological autonomy, ultimately undermining a country’s long-term capacity to remain sovereign in knowledge production and technological development.” Political imaginaries Abdi pointed to the long history of student protests in Iran, notably under the shah and more recently in February, when universities emerged as the main battleground in anti-government protests. “Throughout the modern history of Iran, student movements and universities have been the centre of anti-authoritarian and anti-imperialist mobilisations,” she said. Iran’s 1999 student protests: The hot summer that shook Tehran Read More » “The physical spaces of the universities are also important as it is in these physical spaces where ideas are exchanged, and political imaginaries take shape.” After the fall of the shah and his Pahlavi dynasty, universities remained a stronghold for nationalist and leftist groups. On 14 June 1980, the new Islamic leadership shut them down in what became known as the Cultural Revolution. When campuses reopened in 1983, all students and professors who opposed Islamic rulings were expelled. The authorities also set up the Student Basij to monitor and control campus activity. During the nationwide protests this year, the government announced that it was transferring university classes online - a move many viewed as an attempt to quash the burgeoning student mobilisation. Abdi suggested that the US-Israeli targeting of Iran’s academic institutions is an extension of the government’s crackdown, effectively eradicating the possibility of the development of political alternatives to the current establishment. “Israel is continuing a broader crackdown on universities, albeit on a much larger scale, by completely annihilating these spaces,” Abdi said. “This strategy, which can be described as a form of scholasticide similar to what we witnessed with horror in Gaza and now in Lebanon, seeks to foreclose possibilities for political alternatives and political imaginaries, ultimately undermining the prospects for democracy in Iran.” Iran Tensions MEE correspondent Tehran, Iran London News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0