Iran's Top University Says US-Israel Attack Targeted Nation's Progress, AI Learning

Iran's Top University Says US-Israel Attack Targeted Nation's 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.

The university's website and other online services went dark.

'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.

'The enemy does not want us to succeed or have development and progress, but all our universities are united now by these attacks,' he said at the site of the bombing on Tuesday.

Minutes later, another attack targeted the capital, with low-flying cruise missiles visible over downtown Tehran and air defence guns activated.

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'.