A few days ago, I received an email from an Indian medical student in Tehran. She wrote that she and her roommates had been sleeping in a basement for three nights straight, not because of late-night study sessions, but because missiles had landed just five kilometers away. “We haven’t slept. We’re just sitting and waiting for the explosions to stop,” she said.
She came to Iran to become a doctor. Now, she’s just hoping to survive.
This isn’t a movie plot. It’s an unfolding humanitarian and academic crisis. Since June 13, when Israel launched targeted strikes on Iranian military leaders and nuclear facilities, universities across the country have gone into emergency mode. Classes have been canceled, exams suspended, and dormitories evacuated. Some students were told directly: “Leave the capital. Now.”
At Amirkabir University of Technology, located near Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, the situation has escalated rapidly. Student buildings are surrounded by military vehicles and defense systems. On June 15, the university officially announced “wartime conditions,” canceling all end-of-semester exams indefinitely.
Sharif University of Technology followed suit, issuing a “state of emergency operations” alert—a term usually reserved for actual wartime. Undergraduates and master’s students were barred from campus. Dormitories were ordered closed by June 20. Even the university canteen was shut down, with food payments refunded to student accounts.
These are not just “security precautions.” These are signs of an education system in crisis.
I spoke with Zehra, an Indian student at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. She sounded calm, but weary. “We’ve been relocated to a safer area. We’re being told we might be evacuated back to India soon. But we have no internet, barely any communication.” Her words echo those of dozens of other international students now caught between geopolitical forces far beyond their control.
Iran hosts around 100,000 international students, mainly from Iraq, Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan. Many came for affordable tuition, good medical education, and a familiar climate. They didn’t come expecting to dodge missile fire.
The Iraqi embassy has told its students to leave Tehran. The Afghan students—tens of thousands of them—have fewer options. As one Pakistani student told me, “Even though we’re far from Tehran, panic is spreading. There was gunfire today. My friends in the capital are terrified.”
Indian students have begun to flee in large numbers. Over 100 were evacuated to neighboring Armenia as of June 18, mostly from Kashmir, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh. The Indian embassy has coordinated routes based on which university students attend—those in the north are moved to the outskirts, while others are sent to cities like Qom. Yet even Qom has seen airstrikes this week.
One Kashmiri father I spoke to said, “My daughter is in her final year. I’m in constant contact with her. Right now, we’re okay. But if things get worse, I want her back home immediately.”
I keep thinking about something a doctoral student in Tehran told me. He’s still on campus, trying to finish his research. “I’m so close to submitting my thesis,” he said. “But every night, the dormitory walls shake. I don’t know if it’s worth the risk anymore.”
That line hit me hard. I’ve done my share of late-night thesis edits, fueled by coffee and anxiety. But I’ve never had to choose between graduating and getting killed.
In Tehran, students are stranded in traffic, trying to flee the capital by bus. Others sit huddled in basements, the sound of air-raid sirens replacing lectures. Internet is too slow to send a simple WhatsApp message. Their world has collapsed into a single question: how do we get out?
This is more than a security story. It’s an education story. It’s about the fragility of global academic exchange in the face of conflict. And it’s about how fast a university can turn from a space of learning into a place of fear.
As higher education professionals, we often talk about internationalization, student mobility, and cross-cultural dialogue. But what happens when those same students become hostages of geopolitical conflict? What happens when a classroom becomes a shelter?
We need to start asking these questions seriously. Because right now, the universities we once admired—Sharif, Amirkabir, Tehran Medical—are war zones. Their students are not preparing for careers. They are praying for peace.
And if we truly believe in the value of global education, then we owe it to them to pay attention.