Bombing Tehran's Sharif University: Another war crime by US, Israel

Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman and one of two to be awarded the Fields Medal (the Nobel Prize equivalent for Mathematics), studied at Sharif University of Technology. No other woman — from the US or anywhere else — has received the award, instituted in 1936 and granted every four years.

Mirzakhani’s alma mater Sharif University of Technology in Tehran was bombed by Israel on the morning of Monday, 6 April. It was one of the 29-30 universities in Iran bombed so far in the 38-day war, and the outrage is universal and growing.

Iran’s foreign minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi took time off in the middle of talks to end the war and posted on X: “Israeli-U.S. aggressors have bombed the MIT of Iran. This follows attacks on other universities. 1,400 years ago, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said that even if knowledge was situated in the distant Pleiades, Iranians would be capable of attaining it. Aggressors will see our might.”

Footage emerging from Tehran on Monday show the aftermath of the \airstrikes on Sharif University, causing damage to parts of the campus and disrupting gas supply in surrounding areas. Iranian state media said the strike hit buildings within the university as well as a nearby natural gas distribution site, leading to outages in the neighbourhood. The president of the university confirmed that the institution had suffered damage, while officials noted that the campus was largely empty as classes are being held online amid the ongoing conflict.

The university, founded in 1966, is not only Iran's best, but also among the top 100 universities in the world in several disciplines, including civil engineering. Known as Iran’s MIT, the university has produced a large number of engineers who have gone on to Silicon Valley in the US and founded some of the most successful American tech companies. Shocked American academics too have condemned the bombing.

Historian Narjes Rahmati posted, “To give you an idea of how difficult it is to get accepted to Sharif, out of 500,000 students who pass the national exam per year, only 0.16 per cent (800) qualify for admission to Sharif. Compare that to MIT, whose undergraduate acceptance rate for the Class of 2030 was 4.6 per cent”.  

Prof Vali Nasr from John Hopkins posted, “Sharif University of Technology (founded as Arya Mehr University in 1966) is an icon of modernization and progress in Iran. Its alumni include the first woman to win the Field Medal in Mathematics, Maryam Mirzakhani. It has been a national symbol of achievement, gaining international recognition for the quality of its graduates, large number who have been admitted into the very best engineering programs in the West. The aim of this kind of wonton destruction could only be the nation of Iran itself.”

French commentator Arnaud Bernard summed up the horror in the academic world at what appears another clear case of a war crime by Israel and the US with the following words: “Make no mistake: destroying world-class universities, like the US just did with Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, isn't just an attack on Iran but it's literally an attack on all of us, on all of humanity. It's not Iran that 'won' when Maryam Mirzakhani made her discoveries that won her a Fields Medal: it's all of mathematics, and everything mathematics is used for. Human progress won, technology won, we all won.

“It's the same type of stuff the Mongols did during the sack of Baghdad and their destruction of the House of Wisdom. We all lost something irreplaceable back then, entire fields of human knowledge set back. That's what bombing a university does. It doesn't just destroy buildings. It destroys us, all of us.”