April 11, 2026
Kourosh Ziabari
Throughout their war on Iran, the
U.S. and Israel broke many norms of military engagement, such as systematically
targeting academic institutions in Iran. Universities became a major casualty,
and explicit acknowledgements by Israeli leaders and some U.S. public figures
clarified that these institutions were not collateral damage, but rather,
intended targets. There are no definitive figures as to the number of higher
education institutes targeted, but Iran’s science minister, Hossein Simaei
Saraf, has said more than 30 universities have been bombed.
“It is truly unbelievable that in the 21st century, in the age of human rights, in the age of international law and international humanitarian law, civilian locations and civilians are being targeted,” Simaei Saraf told reporters upon inspecting the ruins of the Laser and Plasma Research Institute at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran on April 4.
“It is regrettable that our adversary has gone back to the Stone Age rather than us coming from the Stone Age,” he said, a reference to Donald Trump’s infamous threat against Iran. Simaei Saraf added that the international community is deprived of Iran’s human potential when the country’s scientific centers become targets in military campaigns.
Founded in 1960 as the National University of Iran, Shahid Beheshti University (SBU) is known for its robust law, literature, and architecture departments. The U.K.-based QS World University Rankings has ranked Shahid Beheshti University 214th in Asia among 1,534 universities listed regionally. Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a former presidential candidate and leader of the 2009 Green Movement who has been under house arrest since 2011, is an SBU alumnus.
The most shocking incident in this string of attacks was the bombing of Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology, often referred to as Iran’s MIT. In the early hours of April 6, U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on the southern parts of the iconic campus destroyed several buildings, including the Philosophy of Science Group, High-Performance Computing Center, and Information and Communication Technology Center.
Sixty years after its founding, Sharif University has established itself as an internationally renowned center for research and academic collaboration. At the height of tensions between Iran and the United States in the late 2000s, it hosted several American Nobel Prize recipients, including the 2005 economics laureate Thomas Schelling, 1976 physics laureate Burton Richter, and 1993 physics laureate Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr. to give speeches to students.
These scientists, as well as other U.S. academics who visited the college over the years, often said they left the campus astonished by the passion they had seen among Iranian students and their widespread appreciation for American thinkers, a glimpse into academic life in Iran that is often neglected in U.S. media reports.
Sharif University of Technology is known for some of its distinguished alumni, including Maryam Mirzakhani, the late Stanford University scientist and the first female recipient of the Fields Medal, the highest international honor in mathematics. But the university as a whole has gained a reputation for its selective admission process and elite public image.
Of nearly 1 million high school graduates applying to undergraduate programs every year through a nationwide university entrance exam known as “konkour,” only between 800 and 1,000 applicants end up being admitted to Sharif University. Over the years, it has also become known internationally as one of the pedigrees of Iran’s brain drain, with a large number of its alumni leaving the country every year in search of better opportunities overseas.
Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, the first Iranian American Democrat in Congress, told Truthout she hopes science and higher education leaders, as well as every member of Congress, denounces these attacks.
“These strikes are devastating and completely unjustified. Universities like Sharif University have produced some of the most brilliant and successful Iranian Americans in our country,” she said. “Destroying universities and civilian infrastructure will have long-lasting consequences for Iran’s 90 million people and could amount to war crimes under international law.”
Shortly before Sharif University was targeted, the bombing of Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) had sent shockwaves throughout the country. Founded in 1929, the university comes in 77th in Times Higher Education’s ranking of universities in Asia, a fortnightly magazine that publishes the most authoritative rankings of world universities.
When IUST’s School of Railway Engineering was founded in 1997, it was reportedly the first such academic department in the Middle East. The university’s sprawling campus in Tehran’s Narmak neighborhood hosts 19 libraries.
Universities in Iran and the United States have tried to maintain their ties over the years of diplomatic bitterness splitting the two governments. Cultural and academic exchanges were not always totally disrupted, and goodwill delegations of professors and academic administrators have traveled between the two countries in a bid to bridge the gaps.
In June 2015, a group of senior U.S. higher education representatives was sent to Iran by the Institute of International Education (IIE), led by IIE’s then-president Allan E. Goodman. IIE described the event as a “historic new chapter in educational relations.” Some of the Iranian institutions the group visited included Shahid Beheshti University and Isfahan University of Technology, both of which were bombed in the war.
But even with this history of engagement under difficult circumstances and in the face of pushback by hawkish politicians on both sides, U.S. universities have largely been silent on the tide of destruction affecting their Iranian counterparts.
Since coming to office, Trump has kicked off a full-throated assault on higher education in the U.S., including cuts to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that facilitated the extension of opportunities to underrepresented demographics on campus, and bringing multimillion-dollar lawsuits against elite universities.
These policies came after universities, buoyed along by corporate media smears, cracked down on students protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Pressure from the Trump administration coercing academic institutions into compliance has likely played a role in the lack of student-led resistance against the U.S. government’s war of aggression in the Middle East.
“The lack of outcry, including from U.S. universities, reflects how Israel’s annihilation of Gaza’s higher education system has normalized the targeting of universities,” said Annelle Sheline, a former foreign affairs officer at the State Department and a research fellow at Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “In addition, U.S. universities have been largely cowed by Trump and would be unlikely to risk drawing his ire by criticizing his administration’s bombing of Iranian universities.”
“While I sincerely hope that the U.S. will no longer attack Iran, I expect that the memory of America bombing several of their most prestigious universities will linger for decades,” she told Truthout.
Alumni and former affiliates of the attacked Iranian universities, many of whom now work abroad, took to social media to recount their memories of studying at the prestigious institutions. There have been some expressions of concern from student groups and nonprofits, but world leaders and international organizations have largely been silent.
In a statement on April 8, Oxford Iranian Society condemned the attacks, as well as other U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s civilian infrastructure such as medical research centers, which are considered to be war crimes.
“There is a bitter and unforgivable cruelty in seeing these universities — centers of learning, debate, and resistance to authoritarianism — reduced to ruins by those who claim to come as liberators,” the statement read. “We stand in solidarity with the students whose education and lives have been upended by both violence from abroad and tyranny at home.”
Truthout reached out to the United Nations’ cultural and educational agency’s senior leadership team for an interview. UNESCO declined to comment and instead referred us to a brief statement in which it expressed its “grave concern over recent developments affecting higher education institutions in the Middle East.” The statement doesn’t include any specific reference to the attacks on Iranian schools.
Iranian universities have often been the scene of dynamic student debates, and have served as a space for interrogation of government authorities. Every year on the first day of the school year in mid-September, Iranian presidents would visit one of Tehran’s top universities and give speeches to large crowds. They also listen to the remarks and answer the questions of a select number of student speakers, and, in some cases, are exposed to caustic words from the podium.
It is likely that by appearing on campuses typically more hostile to the government, these politicians hoped to create a public impression of their tolerance and fair-mindedness. Still, they’ve had to run the gauntlet of opprobrium by unapologetic students.
On other occasions, Iranian students have shown their resistance in more audacious ways. In December 2006, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Amir Kabir University of Technology to address the university community. The event was disrupted on multiple occasions when students in attendance chanted slogans such as “death to the dictator” and burnt Ahmadinejad’s portrait.
Student supporters of Ahmadinejad countered by chanting revolutionary slogans, and the former president was forced to take long pauses several times in the tense atmosphere. Eventually, Ahmadinejad’s security team used stun grenades to contain the crisis.
Sahar Maranlou, a lecturer in law at Royal Holloway, University of London, believes that turning schools into military targets could lead to fear, interruption in research, weakened academic networks, and stronger incentives for the most mobile faculty members and students to leave.
“The scholasticide framework, similar to Gaza, is particularly relevant here as the systematic destruction of education and intellectual life, not just through buildings being bombed, but through the erasure of entire academic ecosystems such as students, scholars, research, and the conditions that make knowledge possible,” Maranlou told Truthout.
Media reports documented Israel’s destruction of all 12 universities in the Gaza Strip in just the first 100 days of the genocide. At least 87 public libraries and archives — including the Central Archives of Gaza — were bombed, and more than 97 percent of schools have been damaged or destroyed.
“Therefore, even limited or symbolic strikes at universities carry disproportionate significance. They signal that higher education itself is no longer off-limits,” Maranlou added.
Iran’s academia will bear significant costs even if the ceasefire holds and the war comes to an end. In a country where education is one of the main pathways to success — especially for women, who make up nearly 60 percent of university graduates — the long-term repercussions are expected to be grim.
“Despite some of the policies of the Islamic Republic, including the dismissal of students and professors for political reasons, the relatively low tuition fees and the commitment of faculty members has allowed nearly 5 million students to graduate annually, and with over 339,000 graduates in STEM, Iran ranks fifth globally,” Peyman Jafari, an Iranian American historian at the College of William & Mary, said in an interview with Truthout.
“After the war, the government’s shrinking budget due to reconstruction, rising inflation and continuing sanctions will probably lead to lower rates of investment in higher education. Higher tuition fees and lower income levels will be a serious obstacle to student enrollment, particularly from the lower classes,” he added.
Kourosh Ziabari
Even if the ceasefire holds and
the war comes to an end, Iran’s academia will bear great costs and long-term
impacts.
“It is truly unbelievable that in the 21st century, in the age of human rights, in the age of international law and international humanitarian law, civilian locations and civilians are being targeted,” Simaei Saraf told reporters upon inspecting the ruins of the Laser and Plasma Research Institute at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran on April 4.
“It is regrettable that our adversary has gone back to the Stone Age rather than us coming from the Stone Age,” he said, a reference to Donald Trump’s infamous threat against Iran. Simaei Saraf added that the international community is deprived of Iran’s human potential when the country’s scientific centers become targets in military campaigns.
Founded in 1960 as the National University of Iran, Shahid Beheshti University (SBU) is known for its robust law, literature, and architecture departments. The U.K.-based QS World University Rankings has ranked Shahid Beheshti University 214th in Asia among 1,534 universities listed regionally. Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a former presidential candidate and leader of the 2009 Green Movement who has been under house arrest since 2011, is an SBU alumnus.
The most shocking incident in this string of attacks was the bombing of Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology, often referred to as Iran’s MIT. In the early hours of April 6, U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on the southern parts of the iconic campus destroyed several buildings, including the Philosophy of Science Group, High-Performance Computing Center, and Information and Communication Technology Center.
Sixty years after its founding, Sharif University has established itself as an internationally renowned center for research and academic collaboration. At the height of tensions between Iran and the United States in the late 2000s, it hosted several American Nobel Prize recipients, including the 2005 economics laureate Thomas Schelling, 1976 physics laureate Burton Richter, and 1993 physics laureate Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr. to give speeches to students.
These scientists, as well as other U.S. academics who visited the college over the years, often said they left the campus astonished by the passion they had seen among Iranian students and their widespread appreciation for American thinkers, a glimpse into academic life in Iran that is often neglected in U.S. media reports.
Sharif University of Technology is known for some of its distinguished alumni, including Maryam Mirzakhani, the late Stanford University scientist and the first female recipient of the Fields Medal, the highest international honor in mathematics. But the university as a whole has gained a reputation for its selective admission process and elite public image.
Of nearly 1 million high school graduates applying to undergraduate programs every year through a nationwide university entrance exam known as “konkour,” only between 800 and 1,000 applicants end up being admitted to Sharif University. Over the years, it has also become known internationally as one of the pedigrees of Iran’s brain drain, with a large number of its alumni leaving the country every year in search of better opportunities overseas.
Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, the first Iranian American Democrat in Congress, told Truthout she hopes science and higher education leaders, as well as every member of Congress, denounces these attacks.
“These strikes are devastating and completely unjustified. Universities like Sharif University have produced some of the most brilliant and successful Iranian Americans in our country,” she said. “Destroying universities and civilian infrastructure will have long-lasting consequences for Iran’s 90 million people and could amount to war crimes under international law.”
Shortly before Sharif University was targeted, the bombing of Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) had sent shockwaves throughout the country. Founded in 1929, the university comes in 77th in Times Higher Education’s ranking of universities in Asia, a fortnightly magazine that publishes the most authoritative rankings of world universities.
When IUST’s School of Railway Engineering was founded in 1997, it was reportedly the first such academic department in the Middle East. The university’s sprawling campus in Tehran’s Narmak neighborhood hosts 19 libraries.
Universities in Iran and the United States have tried to maintain their ties over the years of diplomatic bitterness splitting the two governments. Cultural and academic exchanges were not always totally disrupted, and goodwill delegations of professors and academic administrators have traveled between the two countries in a bid to bridge the gaps.
In June 2015, a group of senior U.S. higher education representatives was sent to Iran by the Institute of International Education (IIE), led by IIE’s then-president Allan E. Goodman. IIE described the event as a “historic new chapter in educational relations.” Some of the Iranian institutions the group visited included Shahid Beheshti University and Isfahan University of Technology, both of which were bombed in the war.
But even with this history of engagement under difficult circumstances and in the face of pushback by hawkish politicians on both sides, U.S. universities have largely been silent on the tide of destruction affecting their Iranian counterparts.
Since coming to office, Trump has kicked off a full-throated assault on higher education in the U.S., including cuts to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that facilitated the extension of opportunities to underrepresented demographics on campus, and bringing multimillion-dollar lawsuits against elite universities.
These policies came after universities, buoyed along by corporate media smears, cracked down on students protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Pressure from the Trump administration coercing academic institutions into compliance has likely played a role in the lack of student-led resistance against the U.S. government’s war of aggression in the Middle East.
“The lack of outcry, including from U.S. universities, reflects how Israel’s annihilation of Gaza’s higher education system has normalized the targeting of universities,” said Annelle Sheline, a former foreign affairs officer at the State Department and a research fellow at Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. “In addition, U.S. universities have been largely cowed by Trump and would be unlikely to risk drawing his ire by criticizing his administration’s bombing of Iranian universities.”
“While I sincerely hope that the U.S. will no longer attack Iran, I expect that the memory of America bombing several of their most prestigious universities will linger for decades,” she told Truthout.
Alumni and former affiliates of the attacked Iranian universities, many of whom now work abroad, took to social media to recount their memories of studying at the prestigious institutions. There have been some expressions of concern from student groups and nonprofits, but world leaders and international organizations have largely been silent.
In a statement on April 8, Oxford Iranian Society condemned the attacks, as well as other U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s civilian infrastructure such as medical research centers, which are considered to be war crimes.
“There is a bitter and unforgivable cruelty in seeing these universities — centers of learning, debate, and resistance to authoritarianism — reduced to ruins by those who claim to come as liberators,” the statement read. “We stand in solidarity with the students whose education and lives have been upended by both violence from abroad and tyranny at home.”
Truthout reached out to the United Nations’ cultural and educational agency’s senior leadership team for an interview. UNESCO declined to comment and instead referred us to a brief statement in which it expressed its “grave concern over recent developments affecting higher education institutions in the Middle East.” The statement doesn’t include any specific reference to the attacks on Iranian schools.
Iranian universities have often been the scene of dynamic student debates, and have served as a space for interrogation of government authorities. Every year on the first day of the school year in mid-September, Iranian presidents would visit one of Tehran’s top universities and give speeches to large crowds. They also listen to the remarks and answer the questions of a select number of student speakers, and, in some cases, are exposed to caustic words from the podium.
It is likely that by appearing on campuses typically more hostile to the government, these politicians hoped to create a public impression of their tolerance and fair-mindedness. Still, they’ve had to run the gauntlet of opprobrium by unapologetic students.
On other occasions, Iranian students have shown their resistance in more audacious ways. In December 2006, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Amir Kabir University of Technology to address the university community. The event was disrupted on multiple occasions when students in attendance chanted slogans such as “death to the dictator” and burnt Ahmadinejad’s portrait.
Student supporters of Ahmadinejad countered by chanting revolutionary slogans, and the former president was forced to take long pauses several times in the tense atmosphere. Eventually, Ahmadinejad’s security team used stun grenades to contain the crisis.
Sahar Maranlou, a lecturer in law at Royal Holloway, University of London, believes that turning schools into military targets could lead to fear, interruption in research, weakened academic networks, and stronger incentives for the most mobile faculty members and students to leave.
“The scholasticide framework, similar to Gaza, is particularly relevant here as the systematic destruction of education and intellectual life, not just through buildings being bombed, but through the erasure of entire academic ecosystems such as students, scholars, research, and the conditions that make knowledge possible,” Maranlou told Truthout.
Media reports documented Israel’s destruction of all 12 universities in the Gaza Strip in just the first 100 days of the genocide. At least 87 public libraries and archives — including the Central Archives of Gaza — were bombed, and more than 97 percent of schools have been damaged or destroyed.
“Therefore, even limited or symbolic strikes at universities carry disproportionate significance. They signal that higher education itself is no longer off-limits,” Maranlou added.
Iran’s academia will bear significant costs even if the ceasefire holds and the war comes to an end. In a country where education is one of the main pathways to success — especially for women, who make up nearly 60 percent of university graduates — the long-term repercussions are expected to be grim.
“Despite some of the policies of the Islamic Republic, including the dismissal of students and professors for political reasons, the relatively low tuition fees and the commitment of faculty members has allowed nearly 5 million students to graduate annually, and with over 339,000 graduates in STEM, Iran ranks fifth globally,” Peyman Jafari, an Iranian American historian at the College of William & Mary, said in an interview with Truthout.
“After the war, the government’s shrinking budget due to reconstruction, rising inflation and continuing sanctions will probably lead to lower rates of investment in higher education. Higher tuition fees and lower income levels will be a serious obstacle to student enrollment, particularly from the lower classes,” he added.
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