Israeli scientists scramble to save work after Iranian missile hits labs
REHOVOT, Israel, June 20 (Reuters) - Researchers at Israel's prestigious Weizmann Institute of Science have been scrambling to save their experiments after an Iranian missile destroyed a building containing dozens of cutting-edge laboratories.
The missile struck the institute's campus at Rehovot, on the southern periphery of Tel Aviv, in the early hours of Sunday, damaging multiple buildings and prompting researchers to clamber into the ruins to save samples even as fire raged.
No one was hurt as the campus was empty overnight, but one part of a building collapsed entirely, while in the remaining part the walls were blown out, exposing a tangle of twisted metal, blasted debris and blackened cement.
"We did our best to save as much of the samples as we could from the labs, from the buildings, while we were fighting the fire," physicist Roee Ozeri, Weizmann's vice president for development and communications, told Reuters.
Israel began attacking Iran last Friday, saying its longtime enemy was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran, which says its nuclear programme is only for peaceful purposes, retaliated with missile and drone attacks on Israel.
Israel's strikes have killed several prominent Iranian nuclear scientists, wiped out the top echelon of Iran's military command, damaged nuclear capabilities and killed hundreds of civilians.
Iran's attacks have killed 24 civilians in Israel and damaged hundreds of structures, including a hospital in the southern city of Beersheba.
Iran has not said if or why it targeted the Weizmann Institute.
While most of the institute's research is in areas with potential benefits for medicine and scientific knowledge, it also has connections with defence. It announced in October 2024 a collaboration with Israel's largest defence firm Elbit on "bio-inspired materials for defence applications".
A multidisciplinary institution which carries out research in fields including genetics, immunology and astrophysics, Weizmann was founded in 1934 and is considered world-class within the international scientific community.
It is Israel's most important science research institute, with 286 research groups, 191 staff scientists and hundreds of PhD students, master's students and postdoctoral fellows.
The Iranian missile hit the work of researchers such as Eldad Tzahor, who focuses on regenerative medicine with particular relevance to adult heart diseases. He said many samples and tissues that had been part of long-running experiments had been destroyed.
"Everything is lost," he told Reuters TV. "I would estimate that it will take us about a year to get into a full year of research and with everything working again."
In financial terms, the damage is estimated at $300-$500 million, according to the institute, which operates costly, complex machines, often shared between several labs or research groups.
Jacob Hanna, who runs a molecular genetics team focused on embryonic stem cell biology, told the scientific journal Nature that his lab's ceiling had collapsed and the staircase had detached.
His students managed to save hundreds of frozen mouse and human cell lines by transferring them to back-up liquid-nitrogen tanks that Hanna had stored in the basement, Nature reported.
"I was always worried that if a war actually happens, I don't want to lose these," he said.
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Telegraph
10 hours ago
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Inside Israel's ‘scientific crown jewels' bombed by Iran
Prof Eldad Tzahor can just about make out the remains of his office, high on the top floor of the life sciences and cancer research building. Or at least, half of it. The other half is lying in a heap of rubble and twisted metal at our feet. We are standing in the grounds of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv, one of the pre-eminent research centres in the world and commonly referred to as Israel's scientific 'crown jewels'. The sprawling campus set among manicured lawns and colourful flower beds suffered two direct hits from Iranian ballistic missiles, in the early hours on Sunday. In the blink of an eye, years of cutting-edge research into human ageing, cancer prevention and regenerative medicine went up in smoke. Thousands of vital tissue and DNA samples were lost. At least one affected academic has since said they were on the cusp of a major breakthrough. Prof Tzahor, who was working on heart regeneration treatments, points to a sample freezer with a door hanging off, which is standing somewhat upright in the rubble. It stands near two enormous nitrogen tanks, which started a major fire when punctured in the blast. They now lie mangled on their sides. Mutilated extractor fans flop uselessly out of the side of the building, where they were ripped apart by the structure's collapse. 'Some of the studies we were doing take years and years of samples to build up,' he said. 'You can't restart them just like that. 'I suppose, just as we are trying to do with human tissue, we will have to regrow and regenerate.' For Prof Roee Ozeri, a quantum physicist who has given nearly 30 years of his life to the institute, the Iranian strikes were 'ironic'. 'We're fighting cancer and heart disease here, which helps all humanity – and they go and do this.' He points out that even Yahya Sinwar, the former Hamas leader and architect of October 7, benefitted from Israeli medicine when he had brain cancer while in prison. But although the cost to science is undeniable, the narrative of mindless, or indeed accidental, Iranian destruction is potentially misleading. Military sources believe the hit was a deliberate retaliation against Israel's campaign of assassination against Iranian nuclear scientists. This is because of the Weizmann Institute's connections with the defence industry, as well as its alleged historical links to Israel's own shadowy nuclear weapons programme. Israel has never formally admitted that it possesses nuclear weapons – some estimates put its stockpile of warheads into the hundreds – although the programme is often referred to as the worst-kept secret in the Jewish state. Prof Ozeri, who is also the institute's vice-president for communication, smiles wryly as he denies any institutional involvement in nuclear weapons. It is as if he gets the question a lot. 'We are a basic research institute,' he said. 'We do fundamental science for the future of humanity. There is no equivalence [with Israel's actions against Iranian scientists].' As Israel knows better than most, facts on the ground are often swiftly obscured in the war of misinformation. Sunday's strikes swiftly gave rise to online discussions across the Middle East as to their military legitimacy. Ernst Bergmann, the father of Israel's nuclear programme, was the former head of the Weizmann Institute, whose scientists learnt how to extract uranium from the phosphate of the Negev desert during the 1950s. But that is a far cry from current involvement in any Israeli nuclear weapons programme. Even if links did exist, Israelis dismiss any argument of moral equivalence between the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and Sunday's missile strike on the basis that Israel, unlike Iran, has never declared its intention to wipe a sovereign state off the map. Nevertheless, this is not the first time that Iran has been accused of targeting Weizmann scientists. Last year, Israeli authorities said they disrupted an Iranian spy ring in East Jerusalem that was plotting to assassinate a nuclear scientist who worked and lived at the institute. Much more straightforward is the Weizmann's links with various defence manufacturers, such as Elbit Systems, to collaborate on bio-materials and other tech, which are openly stated on both organisations' websites. But Weizmann, named after Israel's first president, is not the only university to have such links, nor to operate under a veil of visible security. Although some students live on campus, no one was injured in the missile attack, thanks to the time of night and strict adherence to the shelter protocol. But dozens of Israeli civilians have been killed in the attacks – even those sheltering in approved bunkers. It has left Israelis in no doubt about the missiles' destructive force. At Weizmann alone, some 45 labs were wrecked, at a potential cost of $100 million (£74 million) to replace. Within hours of the strike, a young researcher, wearing a helmet, was filmed playing the piano amid the ruins. It was a symbol of hope in a time of war. But no one is pretending that the loss to science here is anything short of tragic.
Reuters
a day ago
- Reuters
Israeli scientists scramble to save work after Iranian missile hits labs
REHOVOT, Israel, June 20 (Reuters) - Researchers at Israel's prestigious Weizmann Institute of Science have been scrambling to save their experiments after an Iranian missile destroyed a building containing dozens of cutting-edge laboratories. The missile struck the institute's campus at Rehovot, on the southern periphery of Tel Aviv, in the early hours of Sunday, damaging multiple buildings and prompting researchers to clamber into the ruins to save samples even as fire raged. No one was hurt as the campus was empty overnight, but one part of a building collapsed entirely, while in the remaining part the walls were blown out, exposing a tangle of twisted metal, blasted debris and blackened cement. "We did our best to save as much of the samples as we could from the labs, from the buildings, while we were fighting the fire," physicist Roee Ozeri, Weizmann's vice president for development and communications, told Reuters. Israel began attacking Iran last Friday, saying its longtime enemy was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran, which says its nuclear programme is only for peaceful purposes, retaliated with missile and drone attacks on Israel. Israel's strikes have killed several prominent Iranian nuclear scientists, wiped out the top echelon of Iran's military command, damaged nuclear capabilities and killed hundreds of civilians. Iran's attacks have killed 24 civilians in Israel and damaged hundreds of structures, including a hospital in the southern city of Beersheba. Iran has not said if or why it targeted the Weizmann Institute. While most of the institute's research is in areas with potential benefits for medicine and scientific knowledge, it also has connections with defence. It announced in October 2024 a collaboration with Israel's largest defence firm Elbit on "bio-inspired materials for defence applications". A multidisciplinary institution which carries out research in fields including genetics, immunology and astrophysics, Weizmann was founded in 1934 and is considered world-class within the international scientific community. It is Israel's most important science research institute, with 286 research groups, 191 staff scientists and hundreds of PhD students, master's students and postdoctoral fellows. The Iranian missile hit the work of researchers such as Eldad Tzahor, who focuses on regenerative medicine with particular relevance to adult heart diseases. He said many samples and tissues that had been part of long-running experiments had been destroyed. "Everything is lost," he told Reuters TV. "I would estimate that it will take us about a year to get into a full year of research and with everything working again." In financial terms, the damage is estimated at $300-$500 million, according to the institute, which operates costly, complex machines, often shared between several labs or research groups. Jacob Hanna, who runs a molecular genetics team focused on embryonic stem cell biology, told the scientific journal Nature that his lab's ceiling had collapsed and the staircase had detached. His students managed to save hundreds of frozen mouse and human cell lines by transferring them to back-up liquid-nitrogen tanks that Hanna had stored in the basement, Nature reported. "I was always worried that if a war actually happens, I don't want to lose these," he said.
Sky News
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Israel-Iran live: UK says it will get Britons out of Tel Aviv; Iran 'captures spy'; Trump's attack decision timeline
Israel's stated goal in its fight with Iran is to dismantle its potential to build a nuclear weapon. It isn't clear if Israel has the military might to do it alone, with some of the key sites Iran is using to store and process nuclear material protected deep underground. So far, Israel has conducted strikes on nuclear sites like Natanz, Khondab, Isfahan and Fordow. Yesterday, Israel said it had struck the Bushehr site, Iran's only active nuclear plant, before seemingly rowing back the comments. But what are the risks from such attacks, and could they lead to a nuclear fallout of some kind in a region home to tens of millions of people? Underground safety Peter Bryant, a professor at the University of Liverpool who specialises in radiation protection science, said he was not too concerned about the risks so far. While there had been strikes on the likes of Khondab, a lot of the damage reported so far is external, and such facilities are designed to contain internal issues. "Uranium is only dangerous if it gets physically inhaled or ingested or gets into the body at low enrichments," he said. Nuclear material could end up buried Darya Dolzikova, a senior research fellow at London thinktank RUSI, said attacks on facilities at the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle - the enrichment stages where uranium is prepared for use in a reactor - pose primarily chemical, not radiological risks. Sites like Natanz and Isfahan are enrichment sites. Such chemicals could be dispersed, but such a risk is again lower with underground facilities. Simon Bennett, who leads the civil safety and security unit at the University of Leicester in the UK, said Israeli strikes were likely to end up "burying nuclear material in possibly thousands of tonnes of concrete, earth and rock". Risk of 'absolute catastrophe' at nuclear power plant The major concern would be if the Israelis attacked the Bushehr nuclear reactor. Richard Wakeford, honorary professor of epidemiology at the University of Manchester, said that while enrichment facilities would remain a chemical issue, a reactor strike would be a "different story". This could lead to the release of radioactive elements either in a plume of volatile materials or into the sea, he added. James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said an attack on Bushehr "could cause an absolute radiological catastrophe". Gulf State water supply could be vulnerable For the Gulf States, any potential impact on Bushehr threatens to contaminate Gulf waters, jeopardising a critical source of desalinated potable water. In a number of Gulf countries like the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain, desalinated water accounts for a huge amount of drinking water. Nidal Hilal, professor of engineering and director of New York University Abu Dhabi's Water Research Centre, said: "Coastal desalination plants are especially vulnerable to regional hazards like oil spills and potential nuclear contamination."
