Mohammad Reza Aref, Iran’s first vice president, has accused the US of deploying a “bunker-buster” bomb to target Tehran’s Sharif University of Technology.

“No barbarity in history has ever been able to strip science from the Iranian people. Science is rooted in our souls, and this fortress will not crumble.”

The US has not commented on the strike early on Monday.

Sharif University has often been compared to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US for its role in advancing scientific study in Iran. Several professors affiliated with the university have been killed, accused of having links to the country’s nuclear programme.