Pasteur Institute Director Opens Up on US-Israeli Attack Vows Health Mission Will Endure

The images of the shattered Pasteur Institute of Iran that circulated after the April 2 airstrikes were both heartbreaking and profoundly unsettling: collapsed walls, devastated laboratories, twisted medical equipment, and sections of a century-old scientific institution reduced to rubble.

For many Iranians, especially the older generation, witness to the institute’s evolution over the decades and its significant contributions to society, the attack was shocking not only because of the scale of the destruction, but because of what had been targeted.

It was not a military facility, but one of the country’s oldest biomedical and public health institutions, a center long associated with vaccine development, disease control, and scientific research, and one that had helped safeguard public health for more than a century.

For Iranians, it was a living symbol of the country’s glorious scientific heritage and one of the enduring pillars of the nation’s modern medical history.