[News] Why Israel bombs Iranian universities and silences American ones

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-israel-bombs-iranian-universities-targets-american-ones>
Why Israel bombs Iranian universities and silences American ones
Hamid Dabashi
May 13, 2026
------------------------------

"Iranians Condemn Strike on a Top University." By the time The New York
Times
<https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/world/middleeast/iranians-condemn-university-strike.html>
comes out to report on a vicious Israeli
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel> attack on Iranian
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/iran> universities, you know, as
we say in Persian, "the soup is so salty even the cook must admit to it".

But as always, the point is not for the so-called "paper of record" to
report the truth about the terror perpetrated by The Times's favourite
settler colony. It is to massage and manage the facts whenever the
barbarism of Israel generates bad publicity.

"Government officials," the Times reports, "and anti-government activists
alike denounced the attacks on the Sharif University of Technology in
Tehran, the latest Iranian center for higher education to be targeted."

This is, of course, malicious phrasing. The destruction of a major
institution of higher learning is not a matter to be filtered through the
familiar pro- versus anti-government binary the Times habitually imposes on
Iran. Bombing a university campus - in Iran, Palestine
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine> or Lebanon
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/lebanon> - is an act of barbarism
regardless of political divisions within a country.

Far more serious journalism than anything the US
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us> corporate media can claim has
documented what is happening on Iranian campuses far more accurately. "Some
30 universities came under fire", one reliable report
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/how-iran-universities-became-target-us-israeli-attacks>
noted, "in what Iranian academics and students say is an attempt to erase
sovereignty and technological autonomy."

If a reporter actually cares to provide context, we then read: "Often
likened to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US,
Sharif University of Technology is decades old. It is widely regarded as
one of the leading engineering schools in West Asia. Among its alumni is Maryam
Mirzakhani
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/maryam-mirzakhani-leading-iranian-mathematician-dies-aged-40>,
who became the first woman and the first Iranian to be awarded the Fields
Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics, in 2014."

That is responsible reporting.

Do the Zionist editors and readers ofThe New York Times even know who
Maryam Mirzakhani was? These pro-Israeli outfits are not in the business of
informing their readers, but of sustaining their pathological ignorance.

Other trustworthy news organisations that actually cared investigated
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/6/irans-top-university-bombed-as-us-israel-intensify-attacks-34-killed>
more deeply and corroborated the reports. "Iran's Ministry of Science and
Technology told us that at least 30 universities have been hit since the
beginning of the war," one report noted.

The global disgust with the very word 'Israel' has many causes. This is
just one of them

By now we know we are facing what scholars call an epistemicide
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/how-iran-universities-became-target-us-israeli-attacks>:
an Israeli settler colony, aided by genocidal Zionists like Miriam Adelson
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/miriam-adelson-who-is-israeli-billionaire-backing-trump>
and bought-and-paid-for politicians like US President Donald Trump
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/trump>, seeking to obliterate an
entire academic, scholarly and scientific ecosystem whose origins go back
at least to the Academy of Gondishapur in the sixth century during the
Sassanid period - after which the current Jundishapur University in my
hometown of Ahvaz is named.

The global disgust with the very word "Israel" has many causes. This is
just one of them.

Soon even Israeli media had to acknowledge the scale of the atrocity. "Iran
to turn bombed university into a museum," The Times of Israel
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/iran-to-turn-bombed-university-into-a-museum-says-official/>
reported of Isfahan University of Technology.

By then, the story had already spread globally, and University World News
<https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20260410155441391> was
also documenting the criminal destruction Israel continues to inflict on
institutions and societies across the region.
Epistemicide

As of early April 2026, more than 30 Iranian universities and research
centres had reportedly been damaged or destroyed by Israeli strikes,
supported by Trump's son-in-law, the diehard Zionist Jared Kushner
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/kushner-gaza-plan-erase-palestinian-culture>,
who continues to profit politically and financially from the escalation of war
with Iran <https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/war-on-iran>.

The institutions Israel identified, targeted and sought to destroy
reportedly include Sharif University of Technology, Isfahan University of
Technology and Shahid Beheshti University - my own alma mater, when it was
still called National University.

Other reports indicate that Shiraz University and Urmia University were
also hit. The most detailed documentation, unsurprisingly, is in Persian
<https://www.mehrnews.com/news/6786757/%D8%A2%D8%AE%D8%B1%DB%8C%D9%86-%D9%88%D8%B6%D8%B9%DB%8C%D8%AA-%D8%AE%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%AA-%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%AF%D9%87-%D8%A8%D9%87-%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%B4%DA%AF%D8%A7%D9%87%D9%87%D8%A7-%D9%88-%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%A7%DA%A9%D8%B2-%D8%A2%D9%85%D9%88%D8%B2%D8%B4-%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%84%DB%8C-%D8%AF%D8%B1-%D8%AD%D9%85%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AA>
from inside Iran itself.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-war-iran-not-sparked-mass-protest-movement-us>

Why has the war on Iran not sparked a mass protest movement?

Read More »
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-war-iran-not-sparked-mass-protest-movement-us>

Research facilities, laboratories, administrative buildings, classrooms,
lecture halls, mosques and other places of worship were all reportedly
targeted by Israeli bombers, while the Israeli lobby
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/israel-lobby> mobilised corrupt US
politicians like Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz to support the assault against
the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Americans.

But why target so many Iranian universities in this massive assault on
institutions of higher learning?

There are multiple reasons. Universities are sites of research and
scholarship. They form the scientific infrastructure of any robust society.

Iranian universities - like universities across Asia, Africa, Latin
America, Europe and the United States - are places where cutting-edge work
in medicine, engineering, architecture, the arts, the social sciences and
the humanities is pursued.

Israel - not just Benjamin Netanyahu - does not want such institutions to
flourish in healthy societies around it. Its objective is to reduce the
world surrounding its garrison state to the same barren barbarism from
which genocidal Zionism itself emerged.

To the loud and enthusiastic support of the overwhelming majority of
Israelis, their cowardly army has destroyed similar sites of higher
education in Palestine and Lebanon, and now openly threatens to do the same
elsewhere - perhaps even in Turkey
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/turkey> and Pakistan
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/pakistan>.

They want to see the world around them in ruins so that their garrison
state - that settler colony, that last legacy of European savageries on
this planet - can continue to dominate the region through destruction.

Look at the vicious faces of Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, Netanyahu,
Naftali Bennett, Israel Katz, Danny Danon, ad nauseam, as they commit these
crimes.

This is Israel. This is the last gift of European barbarism inflicted upon
our world.
Campus intimidation

Can you imagine if Israel began bombing major universities in Europe and
the United States? How would Europeans and Americans react if Oxford and
Cambridge, Columbia and Harvard, the University of Chicago and Stanford
were being bombed by Israel?

You think that will never happen? Why? There is the rub.

Israeli and pro-Israeli Zionists have been attacking these universities for
decades, most viciously over the last few years - not yet with bombs, but
with slander and intimidation, doxing, multimillion-dollar lawsuits, yellow
journalism and relentless campaigns to silence dissent against Israel's
genocidal savageries.

They are already "bombing" these campuses politically and intellectually.

What is Project Esther
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/us/project-esther-heritage-foundation-palestine.html>,
advanced by The Heritage Foundation, other than an attempt to politically
and intellectually bomb American universities - spreading fear,
intimidation and silence across campuses so that no one dares utter a word
critical of Israel's disgusting behaviour?

Did they not firebomb <https://www.chronicle.com/article/saids-specter> the
office of the late Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said at Columbia
University in an effort to frighten and silence him?

If Americans and Europeans think Israel will limit its attacks to
Palestinian, Lebanese and Iranian universities, then they have not been
paying attention to what Zionists are already doing to their own
institutions.

Targeting US and European universities through censorship, intimidation,
silencing and curricular control is the political equivalent of bombing
Iranian universities

They hate truth. They hate critical thinking. They hate facts.

They want the world to look away while they slaughter Palestinians, destroy
Lebanon, carpet bomb Iran, seize Syrian
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/syria> territory and bankrupt
Americans <https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/08/opinion/hegseth-war-cost.html>
by manipulating their president into supporting endless wars.

For the same reasons that Trump and American genocidal Zionists target
universities in the United States - and for which they have developed
Project Esther - they also cheer, finance and arm Israel to destroy Iranian
and Palestinian universities.

Project Esther has a domestic front - American universities and colleges -
and a foreign front, where universities in Iran and Palestine are
physically bombed and destroyed.

Targeting American and European universities through censorship,
intimidation, silencing and curricular control is the political equivalent
of physically bombing Iranian and Palestinian universities into ruin.
Sites of dissent

Iranian university campuses, like university campuses everywhere, are not
merely sites of research and scholarship. They are also centres of
resistance against the totalitarian tendencies of a state seeking to
silence dissent.

Student assemblies, labour unions and women's rights organisations have
long been central to Iranian struggles for civil liberties. Israel fears
such forms of civil and organised political life because they represent the
possibility of a healthy and politically conscious society.

Israel fears such forms of civil and organised political life because they
represent the possibility of a healthy and politically conscious society

In December and January, murderous agents infiltrated
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/strange-figures-and-unexplained-killings-clues-mossad-infiltrated-irans-protests>
peaceful protests in Iran, began killing peaceful protesters, burned
mosques and set copies of the Quran on fire.

These are not the organic expressions of popular uprisings for civil
liberties. These are acts designed to sabotage the formation of a robust
civil society capable of opposing Israel and genocidal Zionism through
organised and legitimate political judgement.

This campaign against higher education - what many scholars now call
scholasticide
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-war-us-europe-bear-blame-Israel-war-Palestinian-education>
- also reflects a deeper history of Israeli hatred of any academic culture
it cannot dominate - out of envy and rancour, because they lack it.

The response to such barbarism is not to harm a single Israeli university
campus. Quite the contrary. The response is to boycott
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/bds> those institutions until they
open their doors equally to Palestinians in Israel and throughout the
occupied territories.

Not a single brick, student, faculty member or administrator should ever be
harmed.

These institutions were built on Palestinian land and Palestinian labour,
on broken yet unbending backs, and they must be preserved until they are
ultimately returned to their rightful owners: the Palestinians - Jews,
Christians, Muslims and others alike.

*The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.*

*______________*

Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and
Comparative Literature at Columbia University in the City of New York,
where he teaches Comparative Literature, World Cinema, and Postcolonial
Theory. His latest books include The Future of Two Illusions: Islam after
the West (2022); The Last Muslim Intellectual: The Life and Legacy of Jalal
Al-e Ahmad (2021); Reversing the Colonial Gaze: Persian Travelers Abroad
(2020), and The Emperor is Naked: On the Inevitable Demise of the
Nation-State (2020). His books and essays have been translated into many
languages.
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