‘Another Outrageous, Criminal Act’: US and Israel Bomb University Known as ‘MIT of Iran’

A wave of US-Israeli airstrikes on Monday hit and extensively damaged Sharif University of Technology, a leading Iranian educational institution that is widely known as "the MIT of Iran" and seen as one of the world's top engineering schools.

The attack on the Tehran university—one of dozens of education sites bombed by the US and Israel since they launched their war on Iran in late February—sparked outrage inside Iran and around the world. Mohammad Reza Aref, an engineer currently serving as Iran's first vice president, said the attack on Sharif University "is a symbol of [US President Donald] Trump's madness and ignorance."

"He 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," Aref wrote. "No barbarity in history has ever been able to strip science from the Iranian people. Science is rooted in our souls, and this fortress will not crumble."

The National Iranian American Council called the bombing "another outrageous, criminal act in an illegal war."

"This was a center of learning, not a military target," the group wrote on social media, highlighting video footage showing a building in ruins. "The increasing use of the Gaza playbook in Iran is deeply disturbing and will only deepen insecurity for the US and Israel. End this war."

US Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), the lone Iranian American in Congress, noted that Sharif University has "produced a huge number of engineers who’ve gone on to Silicon Valley and founded some of the most successful American tech companies."

"Why are we bombing a university in a city of 10 million people?" Ansari asked.

Al Jazeera's Tohid Asadi reported from Tehran that the university was "severely hit, with extensive damage reported in the compound's mosque and laboratories."

Vira Ameli, an Iranian global health researcher and lecturer at the University of Oxford, decried the US-Israeli strike on Sharif University, where she spent time as a postdoctoral fellow.

"To wake to the news of this war crime, at a distance and unable to return, is difficult to articulate," Ameli wrote. "And yet history has made one thing clear: Iran is not a country undone by bombardment."

Iranian authorities say US-Israeli attacks have hit at least 30 of the nation's universities, including the Isfahan University of Technology and the Iran University of Science and Technology. The US and Israel have justified some of the attacks by claiming the universities were involved in military-related activities.

"Would American and Israeli leaders consider their own equivalent institutions fair game? Of course not," journalist Natasha Lennard wrote in a column for The Intercept last week. "By stated US and Israeli rationale, however, were Iran able to launch airstrikes on American soil, direct ties to the U.S. and Israeli military-industrial complex would make valid targets of at least the University of California, Berkeley; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Johns Hopkins University, among dozens of other schools."