Iran's Top University Says US-Israel Attack Targets National Progress, AI Learning

Iran's Top University Says US-Israel Attack Targets National Progress, AI Learning

The head of Iran's top science and engineering university believes that the United States and Israel are targeting symbols of Iran's progress as a nation, and not merely hitting the governing establishment.

The Sharif University of Technology in Tehran was bombed on Monday, destroying and damaging multiple buildings, including what was described by the authorities as an artificial intelligence centre housing critical databases.

'We believe the reason the enemy targeted these buildings and destroyed the entire infrastructure is that it did not want us to achieve AI technology,' university President Masoud Tajrishi said, adding that the higher education facility had been working on training AI models in Persian for two years and provided services to hundreds of companies.

Tajrishi also said that no country had been prepared to provide Iran with the knowledge and know-how to work on AI technology due to US sanctions and competitive advantages, so all of the research was done domestically.

The US and Israel have not provided an official reason for targeting Iran's main higher education hubs or cultural heritage sites, which are considered civilian infrastructure. No casualties were reported inside Sharif since all school and university classes are being taken online, but more than 2,000 people have been killed during the war.

The strike on the top university, which was founded six decades ago, came after a string of similar air raids targeting research centres inside other prominent facilities, including the century-old Pasteur Institute, a photonics lab at Shahid Beheshti University and a satellite development lab at the Science and Technology University.

More than 30 universities have been affected by US and Israeli attacks since the start of the war on February 28, Iran's minister of science, research and technology, Hossein Simaei Saraf, told Al Jazeera last week.

The attacks prompted the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to declare US and Israeli-affiliated universities 'legitimate targets'.

Mohammad Hossein Omid, president of Tehran University, wrote a letter on behalf of 15 top university heads last week, urging the IRGC to refrain from attacking other universities in order to show that Tehran is committed to safeguarding higher education facilities anywhere as 'human and global heritage' entities.

However, he has since shifted his position and demanded retaliatory attacks in kind after a huge backlash from local hardline media.

The US and Israel have continued to attack across Iran, targeting the country's infrastructure, hours ahead of US President Donald Trump's deadline for Iran to capitulate to his demands.

Trump said 'a whole civilisation will die tonight' in Iran, with the comment coming days after the country's steel factories and petrochemical manufacturers were extensively targeted in another move that will affect all of Iran's population of more than 90 million.

A mathematics professor held an online class inside the remains of a bombed building as a show of defiance and continuity at the Sharif University on Tuesday.

Placards placed nearby by the authorities read, 'Trump's help has arrived.'

This was in reference to repeated claims by the US president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that they wish to 'help' the Iranian people overthrow the Islamic Republic, which came to power after a 1979 revolution but has faced nationwide protests in recent years.