INSIDE the sprawling Shahid Beheshti University in northern Tehran, a research centre lies in ruins after warplanes bombed it.
The attack on Friday on the Laser and Plasma Research Institute of the elite higher education facility is part of a growing pattern of civilian sites targeted by the United States and Israel in their war on Iran.
There were no casualties at the university because it was mostly empty after all classes across the country were moved online by the government until further notice. Dormitories nearby were lightly damaged.
The US and Israel did not officially divulge the rationale behind the attack, but Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, a senior theoretical physicist and nuclear scientist who was assassinated during the opening salvo of Israel’s 12-day war in June, was the director of a magneto-photonics lab there.
“This hostile act not only targets the security of academics and the country’s scientific environment, but is also a clear attack on reason, research, and freedom of thought,” the university said in a statement, calling on international peers to raise awareness about similar strikes.
Hossein Simaei Saraf, minister of science, research and technology, told reporters at the research centre on Saturday that parts of at least 30 universities have so far been impacted by US and Israeli strikes since the start of the war on February 28.
He said Iranian scientists have been targets for decades and pointed out that several more Shahid Beheshti University professors were assassinated by Israel during the 12-day war.
“Attacking universities and research centres means returning to the Stone Age,” the minister said in reference to a threat by US President Donald Trump to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” by systematically hitting its infrastructure, including power plants.
Another major university attacked during the ongoing war was Tehran’s Science and Technology University, which saw one of its research centres reduced to rubble and other departments damaged a week ago. The facility worked on developing domestically made satellites.
The US and Israel also attacked the Pasteur Institute in downtown Tehran, which was founded more than 100 years ago in collaboration with the internationally renowned Institut Pasteur in Paris but now operates independently.
The institute works on infectious diseases, producing vaccines and biological products and providing advanced diagnostics.
The World Health Organization (WHO), which works with two of the institute’s departments as collaborating centres, confirmed that the institute “sustained significant damage and was rendered unable to continue delivering health services” but said no one was killed.
More than 20 attacks have targeted healthcare facilities in Iran since the start of March, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday, also pointing to the Delaram Sina Psychiatric Hospital, which sustained significant damage in a strike on Sunday.
A major pharmaceutical company was hit near Tehran this week. Iran’s government said the attack aimed to affect medicine supply lines while Israel claimed the company was linked to the production of chemical weapons.
US and Israeli attacks have also impacted schools, houses and businesses across the country, killing more than 2,000 people, according to Iranian authorities. Fighter jets flew at low altitudes over Tehran on Friday night, launching strikes that lit up the mountainous areas north of the capital.
Trump immediately celebrated its targeting by releasing a video of parts of the bridge collapsing and warned that there would be “much more to follow”.
On Saturday, he reminded Iran that there were 48 hours left on his deadline to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or he would bomb Iran’s top electricity generation plants simultaneously and put them out of commission. He has also threatened to bomb water desalination plants. Those facilities and power plants are civilian targets that cannot be targeted under international law.
The commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who are managing the war and running the country backed by the government have emphasised that they will not surrender and will only escalate attacks across the region in retaliation.
Washington has also bombed the area of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant four times during the war with the latest strike on Saturday killing a guard and damaging a nearby structure without hitting the reactor. Several other civilian nuclear sites were also attacked and destroyed over the past week.
More than 100 US legal experts this week condemned strikes impacting civilians in Iran as raising “serious concerns about violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law” and also expressed concern about “the risk of atrocities across the region”.