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"Iran is now a nation of 78 million people, with about 4.5 million university students, 2500 higher education institutions, 36 science and technology parks, 400 nongovernmental scientific associations, more than 800 research centers, and 1000 scientific journals. Our scientists publish about 30,000 international scientific papers annually, a growth of at least 20-fold since 1979. These achievements could not have been reached without the intensive participation of individual scientists and scientific societies and government support. This participation sprang from a model of development for post revolutionary Iran that respects the rights of all Iranians to have access to higher education. It is this philosophy that has helped the country weather internal and external disturbances. Sanctions on Iran, for example, pushed its science, industry, and service sectors to cooperate in new and fruitful ways and also forced scientists to work more creatively and promote a knowledge-based economy for the first time in Iran's history. This environment further spurred science-driven political discourse in the country. A prominent example is the role of the scientific community in the recent negotiations on Iran's nuclear program. This could not have materialized without the participation of scientists to provide technical expertise and to clarify scientific."
Comment: Just one of the many ways in which Western media distorts and perpetuates a myopic view of terror. Its a bias that ultimately serves the narrative of a 'war of civilizations' - as though the victims of Middle Eastern terror do not have a culture, a civilization, and are not themselves, in the end, the saddest and most victimized of terror attacks.