The destruction of parts of the main building of the Pasteur Institute of Iran in March and April 2026, during the recent military clashes and attacks, drew attention to one of the country’s most important scientific and medical institutions. The Pasteur Institute, among Iran’s oldest research and pharmaceutical centers, became the focus of a central question: was the damage caused merely by its proximity to sensitive government buildings, or was the center directly targeted?
According to Dr. Massoud Habibi, cultural and student affairs deputy at the Ministry of Health, 360 health, medical, educational, and research centers affiliated with the ministry were hit during the recent war. Many of these centers, including the Pasteur Institute in Tehran, were directly targeted, according to Health Ministry officials.
Around two weeks after the attacks, the Pasteur Institute in Paris issued a press statement expressing sympathy with those affected, while emphasizing that there is no direct cooperation between the Paris Pasteur Institute and the Pasteur Institute of Iran, which has been independent since 1946.
Accounts of the Attacks on the Central Building
According to a field report by Zahra Jafarzadeh published in the daily Shargh on April 4, 2026, the building of the Pasteur Institute of Iran was hit by missile attacks three times between February 28 and March 23, 2026. The first attack took place on February 28, the second on March 6, and the final attack on March 23.
The journalist’s field observations showed that all streets leading to Pasteur Street, and specifically the area around the Pasteur Institute, had been blocked. Armed officers were guarding concrete checkpoints in the area of 12 Farvardin Street. Residents of the surrounding residential alleys had been evacuated, gas had been cut off in the area, and only two or three families remained in an alley with 40 residential units.
In the middle of 12 Farvardin Street, the asphalt had been torn up and the windows of nearby buildings had shattered. According to local residents quoted in Shargh’s report, a three-story building in the alleys leading to the Pasteur Institute had been completely destroyed, leaving its residents homeless.
The Shargh reporter wrote of the scene:
The officers do not allow entry. They say the last missile attack took place on March 23, 2026, but because images of the destruction were published on April 2, everyone assumed the institute had been destroyed on that exact day. The officers also said that the institute had not been directly attacked. The adjacent street has a more serious checkpoint. Three armed men are standing there, and eventually one of them accompanies the reporter toward the institute’s area. From a distance, there is no clear view. The main street is blocked by other armed officers, and a heavy vehicle has also been placed at the entrance to the road. Beyond the checkpoint, the destruction is extensive. The grounds of the Pasteur Institute can be seen from afar. Its walls have collapsed, but entry or photography is not permitted. One of the officers says the institute’s walls have fallen, but the building has not been completely destroyed.
According to the Health Ministry spokesperson, the Pasteur Institute was hit three times. As a result, the malaria, cell bank, clinical research, biotechnology, and support departments, including information technology, technical engineering, the secretariat of the national research network, facilities, administrative buildings, and finance units, were destroyed. The intensity of the heat and the scale of the destruction were such that activity in the central building came to a halt.
Because the attacks occurred outside working hours, none of the staff suffered physical injuries.
Shortly afterward, the health minister estimated the material damage to the institute’s laboratories, equipment, and buildings at no less than 3 trillion tomans.
The Place of the Pasteur Institute in Iran’s Health System
The Pasteur Institute of Iran was a strategic institution within the country’s health system, operating on a 23,000-square-meter site. Ehsan Mostafavi, the institute’s president, has said that the complex included 13 national reference laboratories, three collaborating reference laboratories, eight public-health laboratories, 23 research departments, two World Health Organization collaborating centers, three biobanks, three research-network secretariats, three research centers, one vaccination unit, and one laboratory approved by Iran’s Food and Drug Administration.
The center also had 110 faculty members, 400 experts, and 800 students in specialized programs.
According to health officials, the Pasteur Institute was the country’s main surveillance institution for identifying and controlling endemic and emerging diseases such as plague, tularemia, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, rabies, and Covid-19.
Kermanpour emphasized that the destruction of this center, unlike damage to a hospital, which disrupts domestic treatment, harms global health. The institution is a member of the international Pasteur network, and some of its medicines and products were produced and distributed in cooperation with the World Health Organization.
Claims About Biological Weapons Activities
So far, the governments of the United States and Israel have not named this center, nor have they confirmed or denied hitting this specific site. However, the Pentagon, the White House, and the Israeli army have said in their general statements that the targets of the attacks in Tehran included government headquarters, military infrastructure, and “dual-use research centers”—centers which, according to them, could be used as civilian cover for biological or military research.
The location of the Pasteur Institute on Pasteur Street in Tehran, near government headquarters in an area repeatedly targeted during the war, has added to the ambiguities surrounding why this center was hit.
Meanwhile, speculation and rumors spread about the center’s involvement in chemical and biological weapons activities. Responding to these claims in an interview with Shargh, the Health Ministry spokesperson said that such weapons are not produced by scientific institutions anywhere in the world, and that military bodies conduct such activities independently.
He emphasized that the Pasteur Institute is an international scientific institution subject to global oversight, and that such actions are not possible there.
After the laboratories were destroyed, warnings circulated about the possible spread of contaminated dust in nearby streets. However, the Ministry of Health’s Environmental and Occupational Health Center and the Pasteur Institute issued a joint statement saying that the institute’s sensitive materials had been transferred to safe locations before the attacks.
The statement also emphasized that the intense heat caused by the explosions could have destroyed any possible microbial or viral agent, and that assessments showed there was no microbial or chemical threat to staff, nearby residents, or the wider community.
Scientific Reactions and Assessments
The scientific journal The Lancet examined the scientific dimensions of the incident in an article published in May 2026, writing that the Pasteur Institute of Iran had suffered severe damage in late March 2026 as a result of a series of airstrikes.
The article stated that the 106-year-old institution had played a key role in combating human pathogens in the region and had responded to numerous epidemics and pandemics throughout its history. The center housed reference laboratories, research and vaccine-production units, pathogen-surveillance systems, and outbreak-response teams.
According to the Lancet report, the World Health Organization said the damage had severely reduced the center’s operational capacity. The attacks came at a time when years of sanctions had already left Iran’s health system fragile.
The authors also recalled that in 2018, they had warned in The Lancet about the impact of U.S. sanctions on Iran’s viral hepatitis elimination program, a program that depended on domestically produced vaccines and essential imported medicines.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Iran also faced multiple waves of disease while sanctions restricted access to genomic-surveillance capacities and vital resources needed for the Pasteur Institute’s preparedness. The authors stressed that the current destruction has created a new and far broader threat: the destruction of a foundational public-health institution.
The Lancet authors further wrote that although no one was physically injured in the attacks, critical reference laboratories, including those for genomic surveillance, rabies, HIV/AIDS, viral hepatitis, and vector-borne diseases, suffered serious damage.
According to them, the loss of part of this infrastructure could mean that future seasonal and regional outbreaks will not receive rapid and effective genetic-surveillance responses, placing regional health security at risk.
The authors called for intervention by the international community to fully rebuild the center’s diagnostic and surveillance capacities.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, also said that more than 20 attacks on Iran’s health system had taken place since March 1, 2026, leaving at least nine people dead.
A Century of Scientific and Public-Health Work
The Pasteur Institute of Iran was founded in 1920 and is one of the oldest research and production centers in the Middle East. Its formation goes back to Iran’s urgent need to confront endemic diseases, expand public vaccination, and respond to infectious outbreaks.
Over more than a century, the institute became a central institution in Iran’s health system. It has been the main producer of vaccines administered at birth, including BCG and hepatitis B, alongside veterinary rabies vaccines, Covid vaccines, diagnostic kits, and recombinant medicines.
The institute’s historical significance also lies in the way it was founded and expanded. Abdolhossein Mirza Farmanfarma, a Qajar prince and prime minister during the reign of Ahmad Shah Qajar, is known as its main benefactor. In 1924, he endowed a 10,000-square-meter plot of land from the Atlas Garden in Tehran, the current site of the Pasteur Institute, so that injectable materials, vaccines, and treatments for contagious diseases such as smallpox, plague, cholera, diphtheria, snakebite, syphilis, and gonorrhea could be prepared and provided.
Other benefactors also shaped the institution’s development. Manouchehr Qaragozlu, a representative in the 19th term of the National Consultative Assembly and one of the major landowners of Hamedan, endowed land and a building in the village of Aknelu in 1953, during a plague epidemic in western Iran, for the study of human plague. This later became the Pasteur Institute’s research base for emerging and re-emerging diseases and one of the most important plague research centers in the Middle East.
Dr. Sabar Farmanfarmaian, the son of Abdolhossein Mirza Farmanfarma, was another major figure in the institute’s history. Trained in medicine in Paris and Switzerland, he later directed Iran’s malaria eradication program, worked with the Ministry of Health under Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh’s government, served as governor of Fars, and held responsibilities with the World Health Organization in Beirut and Cairo. In 1971, the Iranian government invited him back to head the Pasteur Institute. Shortly before his death, he endowed his private house and garden in Shemiran to the institute for a specialized clinic, vaccination against infectious diseases, and medical laboratories.
Alongside these figures, Zahra Tajer Masha’i, Ali-Asghar Akbari, Zabihollah Momayyezadeh, and Hossein Heidari were among other benefactors who contributed to the development of the Pasteur Institute in Tehran and other cities. This history makes the institute not only a scientific and medical center, but also part of Iran’s public-health memory.
Plans for Reconstruction and Restoring Activities
After the attacks, Ehsan Mostafavi, president of the Pasteur Institute, announced that despite severe damage to the central building in Tehran, the institute’s production structures in the field of vaccines and biological products, including serum-based injectable products, diagnostic kits, and antigens, had been spared serious damage.
According to him, the production and distribution of hepatitis, BCG, veterinary rabies, and Covid vaccines continues and has not stopped.
Mehdi Rouhani, the institute’s public relations director, also announced that some laboratory equipment and activities had been transferred to backup centers in Tajrish, Amol, and Karaj in order to prevent interruption in diagnostic services and disease surveillance.
Benefactors inside and outside Iran have declared their readiness to help rebuild the center, and some government and financial institutions have also spoken of support plans.
Fatemeh Mohajerani, the government spokesperson, announced that new laboratories are to be built at Sharif University, Shahid Beheshti University, Iran University of Science and Technology, Isfahan University of Technology, and the Pasteur Institute using tax capacities.
Bank Saderat Iran also announced, after visiting the damaged sections, that it was ready to provide financing, use the financing mechanisms available under Article 56 of Iran’s budgetary law, facilitate the import of specialized equipment, invest, and participate in rebuilding the center.
At the same time, Health Ministry officials have emphasized that the Pasteur Institute’s historical buildings have heritage value and that their reconstruction must be carried out without altering the architectural and historical identity of the complex.
