'Heartbreaking': Iranian scientists on losing labs, libraries and liberty
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Sharif University of Technology after it was bombed on 7 April 2026.Credit: Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty
Bombs dropped by the United States and Israel on Iran have damaged some 30 universities since war began on 28 February, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society. In an open letter to United Nations officials and the governments of parties to the conflict, more than 1,400 international scholars have signed a statement condemning the bombing of civilian academic, health and research infrastructure.
Affected institutions include Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, the country’s leading technology institution, and the Pasteur Institute of Iran, also in Tehran, established more than a century ago for research into drugs and vaccines.
A White House spokesperson and a representative of Israel's military separately told Nature that they do not target civilian infrastructure, however, did not explain why these and other named institutions were bombed.
Before the latest conflict, many students and academics were participating in protests for greater democracy, human rights and liberty. The Iranian government crushed the protests in January and many students were among those killed. The government has tight control over universities and academics say they fear that once the war ends, the government will tighten its grip and settle scores with its critics.
Researchers — four based in Iran — describe the impact of the destruction and what might come next.
CERN physicist Abideh Jafari: Journal editors and referees, please be patient.
Isfahan University of Technology in central Iran was attacked twice in late March, according to Abideh Jafari, a particle physicist at the university. Jafari is also a deputy team leader at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, working on the CMS particle detector. She says that a countrywide Internet blackout prevented her team accessing data from CERN. Her group continues to try to work, but it is difficult “because the students are not in a good state of mind: most of them were worried because the city was being bombarded”, she says.
Particle physicist Abideh Jafari.Credit: Sophia Elizabeth Bennett/CERN
Jafari has a message for the international science-publishing community. Journal editors and “referees should understand that the situation does not allow for a quick reply and that Iranian scientists may have lagged behind in publishing their findings”.
Research ethicist Hamed Bikaraan-Behesht: ‘Researchers unable to concentrate on work.’
“Heartbreaking.” That is how Hamed Bikaraan-Behesht, a researcher in the ethics of science at the National Research Institute for Science Policy in Tehran, describes seeing a country under attack and innocent people losing their homes.
He says that researchers feel unsafe going to university and are unable to concentrate on work. Also, because of a government-imposed Internet shutdown, Bikaraan-Behesht says that he lost contact with a collaborator outside Iran, and lost trace of the review of a paper he had submitted to an international journal with this co-author. Now, he is concerned about the long-term odds for science in Iran. The cost of post-war reconstruction means “financial challenges waiting for us are likely to affect research funds”, he says.
Neuroscientist Ali Gorji: ‘World scientific community needs to be more vocal.’
The Shefa Neuroscience Research Center in Tehran suffered damage on 1 March, a few days after the beginning of the war, according to Ali Gorji, a neuroscientist at Münster University in Germany. Gorji, who supervises PhD students at the Shefa centre and regularly visits, says nearby hospitals were also attacked. A large brain-tissue bank, however, has survived the damage, he says.
Gorji says the world’s scientific community needs to be more vocal against attacks to research infrastructure. “You can rebuild a building. But if attacks on universities become a normal thing, then they can happen in any future stupid war. And this idea is much more destructive than attacking a single building,” he says.
Philosopher Ebrahim Azadegan: ‘More than 1,000 books destroyed.’
A library of books collected during a lifetime of academic work was destroyed in a moment, says Ebrahim Azadegan, a philosopher based at Sharif University of Technology. When the university was hit by bombs on 6 April, Azadegan says he rushed to the campus the following morning to find that his office, containing more than 1,000 books, had been destroyed. “Works I had lived with, grown with, loved and cherished were gone in a single moment,” he told Nature.
Philosopher Ebrahim Azadegan (pictured with his personal library before it was bombed). Credit: Ebrahim Azadegan
“My notes, ideas, handwritten manuscripts, students’ papers and drafts of unfinished work were all burned. Only those who t