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For years, Israel has been targeting Iranian nuclear scientists, hoping to suffocate Iran’s nuclear program by hitting the brain behind them.
Now, as Iran and Israel fall into a direct, free conflict, Israeli scientists are known among other fields after Iranian missiles attacked the Premier Institute, known for their work in life sciences and physics.
No one was killed early Sunday on a strike at the Weizmann Institute of Science, but it caused major damage to multiple labs on campus, dismissing long-standing scientific research and sending a frightening message that Israeli scientists and their expertise are targets in an escalating conflict with Iran.
For Iran, “it’s a moral victory,” said Oren Schurdiner, a professor at the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and a professor at the Ministry of Molecular and Neuroscience, whose lab has disappeared after the strike. “They were able to hurt the jewels of the Israeli science crown.”
Iranian scientists were the main targets of the long shadow war
Over the years of the shadow war between Israel and Iran that preceded the current conflict with Israel, Israel has repeatedly targeted Iranian nuclear scientists with the aim of reclaiming Iran’s nuclear program.
Israel continued its tactics in its first blow against Iran a few days ago, killing multiple nuclear scientists, top generals, and impressive nuclear facilities and ballistic missile infrastructure.
Iran has been accused of targeting at least one Wiseman scientist previously. Last year, Israeli authorities said they arrested Iranian spyring, who conceived a conspiracy to assassinate Israeli nuclear scientists who worked and lived in the lab.
Israeli media cited the charges, saying that the suspect, Palestinian from East Jerusalem, gathered information about the scientists and photographed the exterior of the Wiseman Institute, but was arrested before proceeding.
Iran’s infiltration of intelligence news into Israel has made this week’s strike against Wiseman much more uncomfortable, as Israel’s plots are not seen.
“The Wiseman Institute is in the sight of Iran,” said Yoel Gzansky, an Iranian expert and senior researcher at the National Security Institute, a think tank in Tel Aviv. He stressed that he didn’t know for certain whether Iran was planning to attack the lab, but that he believed it was.
Although it is an interdisciplinary research institute, Wiseman, like other universities of Israel, is associated with Israeli defense facilities.
However, Xansky said the institute primarily represents “Israel’s scientific advancement,” and the strike against which it shows Iran’s views.
The damage to the lab and the lab has been literally destroyed.”
Founded in 1934 and later renamed after Israel’s first president, Wiseman is ranked one of the world’s top research institutes. The scientists and researchers publish hundreds of research each year. The Nobel Prize winners in chemistry and three Turing Prize winners are associated with the laboratory that built Israel’s first computer in 1954.
According to the Institute, one residential life science lab, an empty, under construction second building, and two buildings intended for chemical research have been attacked. Dozens of other buildings have been damaged.
Media were allowed to visit on Thursday, but the campus has been closed since the strike. Large mountains of rocks, twisted metal and other debris were scattered across the campus. There were crushed windows, collapsed ceiling panels, and burnt walls.
A photo shared by one professor, shared on X, showed the flame rising near a significantly damaged structure with debris scattered on nearby ground.
“Some buildings were hit very hard. So some labs were literally destroyed and there was nothing left in reality,” said Sarrell Fleischman, a biochemistry professor who said he had visited the site since the strike.
Many researchers have no longer been able to live their lives.
Many of these labs focus on life sciences where projects are particularly sensitive to physical damage, Fleischmann said. The lab studied areas such as tissue production, developmental biology, and cancer, but much of their research has now stopped or severely retreated due to damage.
“This was the life job of a lot of people,” he said.
For Schuldiner, the damage means that the lab he has worked for for 16 years is “completely gone. There’s no trace. There’s nothing to save.”
In a sparkling lab, he said he held thousands of genetically modified fly used to study the development of the human nervous system, which helps provide insight into autism and schizophrenia.
The lab housed sophisticated microscope-like instruments. Researchers from Israel and abroad joined forces in their research efforts.
“All of our research has stopped,” he said, estimating it would take years to get the science work back on track. “The science we can create and the ability to contribute to the world is a huge loss.”
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