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Healthocide? Why the attack on the Pasteur Institute of Iran is more than a war crime

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Share & more On 2 April, the United States and Israel bombed the 106-year-old Pasteur Institute, targeting one of Iran’s oldest and most critical public health institutions. Established in 1920, the institute has long been central to vaccine production, infectious disease surveillance, and epidemiological research in the Middle East and beyond. But this wasn’t simply a strike on a building. It was...
The strongest version of this narrative is that modern warfare has evolved to target the infrastructure that sustains public health, rather than deploying biological weapons directly. The attack on Iran’s Pasteur Institute is framed as part of a broader, systemic strategy to degrade health systems, with historical and contemporary examples provided to support this claim. The article effectively highlights the gap in international law to address such tactics and introduces the concept of "healtho...