The Sky Aflame Over Persia
Suddenly social media feeds on home pages were filled with images and videos of smoke billowing over a city, collapsed buildings, and rockets in flight. The war between Iran and Israel and the United States has erupted again. It began with airstrikes on both the home and the office of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Imam Khamenei, which in turn provoked a retaliation from Iran. The war, involving regional powers in a strategically vital region, has reverberated beyond borders.
Analysts say the escalation could drag the world into a multidimensional global crisis, from energy shortages as the Strait of Hormuz is threatened, to food supply disruptions, to a loss of faith in the multilateral system that should safeguard peace.
The Strait of Hormuz, through which almost a third of the world’s oil passes, has again become a flashpoint shaping events. For developing countries like Indonesia, the impact is felt almost immediately. PT Chandra Asri Pacific Tbk, a petrochemicals company heavily dependent on production from the conflict zone, announced force majeure after disruptions to feedstock shipments through the Strait of Hormuz as a result of the outbreak of the conflict.
It shows how easily a country can be dragged into fighting by others, a lesson for all nations. The capacity to stand tall in the eye of a global swirl of conflict is a necessity.
This latest war shows that a nation’s resilience is determined by how strong its mastery of science and technology is, how deep its research and innovation ecosystem runs, and how prepared its human resources are to face evolving threats.
The Indonesian government seems to understand this. Among eight main national development priorities, security and defence are included. A step whose relevance now seems much more tangible as we watch what is happening on Persian soil.
As an academic, the question then turns to the realm of higher education. What role should universities play in such a critical context? The answer, of course, must go far beyond rhetoric. In the AI era, universities should surpass their function as mere knowledge transmitters. Higher education is a laboratory of civilisation, where solutions policymakers have not yet imagined are formulated, tested, and prepared for implementation.
In this context, I often reflect on my Master’s and Doctoral students at Universitas Amikom Yogyakarta. The research conducted there, ranging from natural language processing and data security to artificial intelligence systems, are building blocks of the nation’s resilience. When one observes Iran’s ability to launch a range of rockets amid embargoes that constrain it, a paradox worth contemplating becomes evident.
The country currently being devastated by air strikes is nonetheless recorded as having the world’s highest share of women in STEM, with nearly 70 percent of graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics being women, even surpassing the United States.
More than 130 Iranian women are recognised as researchers with works among the most cited globally in fields such as artificial intelligence, engineering, and medicine. Even 58 percent of doctoral students in Iran are women. Academics describe this as the STEM paradox: external pressures that pile up do not quench Iranian women’s zeal to study and contribute to science. On the contrary, they seem to ignite an even bigger flame.
It is clear that the Iran–Israel–US war, with all its geopolitical complexity, poses a fundamental question to every nation: Have they prepared themselves? For Indonesia, the answer cannot be left entirely to the state. It must be answered together, by the government through its policies, by research institutions through their productivity, and by lecturers and students through their daily intellectual work.
Four days hence the world will mark International Women’s Day on 8 March 2026. The Iranian STEM paradox may prove the most relevant reflection for that moment: that women, wherever they are and no matter how heavy the pressures, are a force in science that cannot be ignored.
Allah SWT reminded us long ago in His Word: “And prepare against them whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war to terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others whom you do not know.” (QS Al-Anfal: 60). In the AI era, the power Allah commands us to prepare for includes, perhaps even principally, the power of knowledge and technology. And women are an integral part of that power. Wallāhu a‘lam.