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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-israel-bombs-iranian-universities-targets-american-ones">middleeasteye.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Why Israel bombs Iranian universities and silences American ones</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Hamid Dabashi</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time">May 13, 2026</div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><p>"Iranians Condemn Strike on a Top University." By the time <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/world/middleeast/iranians-condemn-university-strike.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a> comes out to report on a vicious <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel" target="_blank">Israeli</a> attack on <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/iran" target="_blank">Iranian</a> universities, you know, as we say in Persian, "the soup is so salty even the cook must admit to it".</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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, <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine" target="_blank">Palestine</a> or <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/lebanon" target="_blank">Lebanon</a> - is an act of barbarism regardless of political divisions within a country.</p>
<p>Far more serious journalism than anything the <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us" target="_blank">US</a>
corporate media can claim has documented what is happening on Iranian
campuses far more accurately. "Some 30 universities came under fire", <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/how-iran-universities-became-target-us-israeli-attacks" target="_blank">one reliable report</a> noted, "in what Iranian academics and students say is an attempt to erase sovereignty and technological autonomy."</p><p>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 <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/maryam-mirzakhani-leading-iranian-mathematician-dies-aged-40" target="_blank">Maryam Mirzakhani</a>,
who became the first woman and the first Iranian to be awarded the
Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in mathematics, in 2014."</p>
<p>That is responsible reporting.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Other trustworthy news organisations that actually cared <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/6/irans-top-university-bombed-as-us-israel-intensify-attacks-34-killed" target="_blank">investigated</a>
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.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The global disgust with the very word 'Israel' has many causes. This is just one of them</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By now we know we are facing what scholars call an <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/how-iran-universities-became-target-us-israeli-attacks" target="_blank">epistemicide</a>: an Israeli settler colony, aided by genocidal Zionists like <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/miriam-adelson-who-is-israeli-billionaire-backing-trump" target="_blank">Miriam Adelson</a> and bought-and-paid-for politicians like US President <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/trump" target="_blank">Donald Trump</a>,
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.</p>
<p>The global disgust with the very word "Israel" has many causes. This is just one of them.</p>
<p>Soon even Israeli media had to acknowledge the scale of the atrocity. "Iran to turn bombed university into a museum," <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/iran-to-turn-bombed-university-into-a-museum-says-official/" target="_blank">The Times of Israel</a> reported of Isfahan University of Technology.</p>
<p>By then, the story had already spread globally, and University <a href="https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20260410155441391" target="_blank">World News</a> was also documenting the criminal destruction Israel continues to inflict on institutions and societies across the region.</p>
<h3>Epistemicide</h3>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/kushner-gaza-plan-erase-palestinian-culture" target="_blank">Jared Kushner</a>, who continues to profit politically and financially from the escalation of <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/war-on-iran" target="_blank">war with Iran</a>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Other reports indicate that Shiraz University and Urmia University
were also hit. The most detailed documentation, unsurprisingly, is <a href="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" target="_blank">in Persian</a> from inside Iran itself.</p>
<div>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-war-iran-not-sparked-mass-protest-movement-us" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/2026-03-28T000000Z_1001027590_MT1NURPHO0006ASFRP_RTRMADP_3_USA-TRUMP-PROTESTS%281%29.jpg.webp?itok=OxxkIs2p" width="400" height="250" alt="">
</a></p><p>Why has the war on Iran not sparked a mass protest movement?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-war-iran-not-sparked-mass-protest-movement-us" target="_blank">Read More »</a>
</p></div>
<p>Research facilities, laboratories, administrative buildings,
classrooms, lecture halls, mosques and other places of worship were all
reportedly targeted by Israeli bombers, while the <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/israel-lobby" target="_blank">Israeli lobby</a>
mobilised corrupt US politicians like Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz to
support the assault against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of
Americans.</p>
<p>But why target so many Iranian universities in this massive assault on institutions of higher learning?</p>
<p>There are multiple reasons. Universities are sites of research and
scholarship. They form the scientific infrastructure of any robust
society.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/turkey" target="_blank">Turkey</a> and <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/pakistan" target="_blank">Pakistan</a>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This is Israel. This is the last gift of European barbarism inflicted upon our world.</p>
<h3>Campus intimidation</h3>
<p>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?</p>
<p>You think that will never happen? Why? There is the rub.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>They are already "bombing" these campuses politically and intellectually.</p>
<p></p>
<p>What is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/us/project-esther-heritage-foundation-palestine.html" target="_blank">Project Esther</a>,
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?</p>
<p>Did they not <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/saids-specter" target="_blank">firebomb</a>
the office of the late Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said at
Columbia University in an effort to frighten and silence him?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Targeting US and European universities through censorship,
intimidation, silencing and curricular control is the political
equivalent of bombing Iranian universities</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They hate truth. They hate critical thinking. They hate facts.</p>
<p>They want the world to look away while they slaughter Palestinians, destroy Lebanon, carpet bomb Iran, seize <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/syria" target="_blank">Syrian</a> territory and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/08/opinion/hegseth-war-cost.html" target="_blank">bankrupt Americans</a> by manipulating their president into supporting endless wars.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h3>Sites of dissent</h3>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Israel fears such forms of civil and organised political life because
they represent the possibility of a healthy and politically conscious
society</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In December and January, murderous agents <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/strange-figures-and-unexplained-killings-clues-mossad-infiltrated-irans-protests" target="_blank">infiltrated</a> peaceful protests in Iran, began killing peaceful protesters, burned mosques and set copies of the Quran on fire.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>This campaign against higher education - what many scholars now call <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-war-us-europe-bear-blame-Israel-war-Palestinian-education" target="_blank">scholasticide</a>
- also reflects a deeper history of Israeli hatred of any academic
culture it cannot dominate - out of envy and rancour, because they lack
it.</p>
<p>The response to such barbarism is not to harm a single Israeli university campus. Quite the contrary. The response is to <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/bds" target="_blank">boycott</a> those institutions until they open their doors equally to Palestinians in Israel and throughout the occupied territories.</p>
<p>Not a single brick, student, faculty member or administrator should ever be harmed.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><em>The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.</em></p><p><em>______________</em></p><p>
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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