TEHRAN – Just a day after the United States and Israel conducted an airstrike on Sharif University of Technology in Tehran on Monday, Alireza Zarei, a faculty member of mathematics department decided to continue teaching online at his office which had been almost reduced to rubbles.

Debris had littered the floor. Potted plants were muffled in dust. A jagged crack ran up the wall, exposing the bricks beneath.

That was what reporters saw one day after the US-Israeli airstrike hit the university, one of Iran’s leading scientific institutions, badly damaging the IT Center building and a nearby gas substation by the campus mosque, Xinhua reported.

Parts of the campus had been reduced to rubble. Scattered debris, twisted steel rebars, and the exposed skeletons of buildings made the scene look less like a university than a battlefield.

Yet even amid such ruins, the place remains unmistakably academic. Textbooks and documents lie scattered among broken equipment. And above all, there are the steady, resolute voices of teachers carrying on their lessons.

Zarei is one these professors. On Tuesday, he began teaching to postgraduate students who had joined the class online, as they cannot make it in person due to current situation. 

Zarei started the lesson by wishing glory, honor, and dignity for Iran, and health for his students.

“On Sunday, I wished to teach the next lesson in the classroom on Tuesday. It didn’t seem to be possible back then. Now, I am proud of holding my class here in Information and Technology center, the beating heart of research and education in Sharif University of Technology.”

The professor underlined that the enemies did not just destroyed the buildings, they targeted the [country’s ancient] civilization, a measure that could be taken up only by a stone age brain, the ones who call themselves human, while have no sense of humanity.

“We believe in God. We believe we will win,” Zarei highlighted.

To Masoud Tajrishi, president of the university, every part of the campus was once familiar. But as he walked reporters through the damage in the aftermath of the bombing, even he had to stop from time to time to identify what used to stand there.

“I ask you and I expect that you do not see this destruction as decline or weakness,” Tajrishi told reporters, but rather as a manifestation of “the enemy’s hostility” toward Iran’s scientific and technological progress.

“We, the universities, are moving hand in hand towards this great victory,” he added. “We will build this country again.”

Sharif University of Technology was not the first educational institution to be struck in recent US and Israeli attacks.

On April 7, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations accused the United States and Israel of committing “unprecedented barbarism” by deliberately targeting Iranian universities and scientific institutions, calling the strikes war crimes that no amount of threats or military pressure can extinguish.

In a series of letters to the U. secretary-general and the Security Council this week, Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani detailed a systematic campaign of state terrorism. 

He cited an airstrike early on April 6 that severely damaged Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, including its faculties of civil engineering and electrical engineering, as well as research institutes for nanotechnology and environmental studies. That attack followed a similar strike on April 3 that hit Shahid Beheshti University, damaging its Laser and Plasma Research Institute.

“The intentional targeting of scientific institutions and universities constitutes a clear violation of international humanitarian law and amounts to a war crime,” Iravani wrote.

The Iranian government’s spokesperson, Fatemeh Mohajerani speaking at a news conference at Shahid Beheshti University, echoed that defiance. 

“The enemies cannot extinguish the lamp of Iranian science,” the spokeswoman said, adding that recent attacks were meant to undermine the achievements of the 47-year-old revolution and sever the bond between the nation and its homeland. 

“These miscalculations are wrong. Iran is the common denominator of all Iranians. Those who have a homeland will stand behind their country, and Iranians living abroad will never give in.”

On Saturday, Minister of Science, Research and Technology Hossein Simaei-Sarraf said over 30 Iranian universities had been directly attacked by the United States and Israel since the war began in late February.

Five university professors and more than 60 students had been killed in the strikes, added Simaei-Sarraf, describing attacks on Iranian infrastructure as “crimes against humanity.”

“The main reason the enemy targeted this sensitive infrastructure was that they did not want us to gain access to this technology,” he said, adding that many Iranians abroad have contacted the university, offering to help fund its restoration.

To the foreign attacks, said Tajrishi, Iranian scholars will respond in their own way – in the arena of science and knowledge, just as others are answering “in the streets” and “on the battlefield.”