Senior visiting fellow, George Mason University
Iran’s scientific Olympiad system has become a pipeline of elite talent into universities feeding sensitive nuclear, missile and technology sectors, even as many of the same high achievers leave the country for better opportunities abroad.
The system produced another striking result this weekend, when Iran’s five-member team won five gold medals at the International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics in Hanoi, securing the world championship for a third consecutive year.
The achievement is part of a much longer record. Iran has spent decades identifying exceptional schoolchildren, training them intensively and directing them toward mathematics, physics, engineering, computer science and other technical disciplines.
International victories bring prestige, but the students themselves are arguably more valuable. They form part of the human capital on which Iran’s universities, technology sector and some of its most strategically important industries depend.
That is also where the system encounters its central contradiction. Iran has proved remarkably effective at finding and developing scientific talent. It has had considerably more difficulty keeping it.
A pipeline for elite science
Iran’s Olympiad program is not simply a collection of international competitions. It is the upper end of an extensive system for identifying gifted students while they are still in school.
The Young Scholars Club organizes national Olympiads across mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, informatics, astronomy and other disciplines, with many successful competitors coming through Iran’s selective schools for gifted students, commonly known as Tizhooshan.
Students who advance through successive rounds receive specialized instruction well beyond the standard school curriculum. A small number are eventually selected for international teams and spend months preparing to compete against the strongest students from other countries.
Participation has grown sharply. Some 121,000 students entered Iran’s scientific Olympiads in the Iranian year ending in March 2026, up from 87,000 the previous year, an increase of about 40% and the highest participation in a decade.
There are substantial incentives for those who reach the top. International gold medalists in established scientific Olympiads can receive exemptions from Iran’s fiercely competitive national university entrance examination, or Konkoor, giving them a privileged route into the country’s leading universities and technical programs.
The results extend well beyond astronomy. Iran has repeatedly won medals in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and informatics, including some of the highest placements in international competition.
For the state, those performances provide visible evidence that sanctions and international isolation have not prevented Iran from cultivating world-class scientific ability.
There is substance to that claim. Repeated success shows that Iran has developed an effective mechanism for discovering exceptional students and preparing them to compete at the highest level.
But Olympiad results demonstrate concentrated excellence rather than the overall strength of Iran’s education system. A small group of highly selected students can receive intensive training and state support while ordinary schools face shortages, unequal resources and deteriorating economic conditions.
More revealing is what happens to the medalists after they leave school.
From Olympiad medals to strategic universities
Research into the careers of International Mathematical Olympiad medalists illustrates how concentrated Iran’s elite science pipeline has become.
Among 75 Iranian mathematics medalists whose undergraduate education could be established in one study covering medalists from 1986 to 2005, 71 attended Sharif University of Technology and the other four went to the University of Tehran.
The concentration provides a direct link between Iran’s Olympiad system and two of the institutions at the center of its scientific establishment.
Sharif is widely regarded as Iran’s leading engineering and technical university. It has also had longstanding connections with research areas tied to Iran’s nuclear, missile and defense sectors.
Several research bodies located at the university have been sanctioned by the United States under authorities targeting proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
European sanctions have gone further, citing Sharif’s cooperation with organizations involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program and its connections with entities associated with nuclear research and uranium enrichment.
The University of Tehran has its own history of research touching sensitive fields. Its academics have worked in areas relevant to missiles, drones, aerospace technology and nuclear science, as well as projects connected to Iran’s space program.
The university also played an early role in the development of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Its Atomic Center, established in the 1960s around a US-supplied research reactor, was transferred to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran in 1974 and became the Tehran Nuclear Research Center.
None of this means Olympiad winners are systematically recruited into nuclear or missile programs. There is no evidence of such a direct mechanism, and the overwhelming majority of teaching and research at Iran’s major universities is civilian.
The connection is one of human capital.
The mathematics, physics, computing and problem-solving skills cultivated through Olympiad training are also essential to artificial intelligence, aerospace engineering, advanced computing, cybersecurity, nuclear science and missile development.
The universities that attract Iran’s strongest students supply engineers and researchers to a broad range of institutions, from civilian technology firms and research centers to parts of the defense and nuclear establishment.
For a heavily sanctioned state, such expertise has particular value.
Restrictions on imports, technology transfers, investment and international research collaboration make indigenous scientific capacity more important. Iran may struggle to obtain certain foreign technologies or advanced equipment, but scientific expertise developed domestically is considerably harder to restrict.
The Olympiad system therefore serves a purpose beyond medals. It identifies unusually capable students early, concentrates resources on their development and helps direct them toward disciplines important both to Iran’s economy and to sectors the state considers strategically vital.
But producing that talent does not mean Iran gets to keep it.
The talent drain
Studies of Iranian Olympiad medalists suggest that a substantial proportion eventually build their lives elsewhere.
Among 82 Iranian International Mathematical Olympiad medalists whose current location could be established in one study, 49 — around 60% — were living abroad.
The same research found a strong relationship between studying abroad and permanent migration. More than 70% of Olympiad medalists who pursued either undergraduate or doctoral education overseas eventually remained abroad, while those educated entirely in their home countries were considerably more likely to stay.
Other figures circulated in Iran have been even more dramatic.
In 2022, the secretary-general of the Iranian Talent Association said that 82 or 83 members of a group of 86 Olympiad medalists tracked by the organization had emigrated, arguing that inadequate support for talented young people inside Iran was a major factor.
Iranian officials disputed that figure and cited research suggesting that a majority of a much larger group of international Olympiad winners still lived in Iran or had returned after studying abroad.
The samples and methodologies differ, making the figures difficult to compare directly. But the broader problem of migration among Iran’s most highly educated young people is widely acknowledged.
For students who spend years preparing to compete at international level, the contrast between opportunities inside and outside Iran can be stark.
At home they face inflation, currency depreciation, weakened salaries, limited research funding, shortages of modern laboratory equipment, bureaucratic restrictions and obstacles to international scientific cooperation.
Sanctions deepen many of those pressures by limiting access to equipment, software, financing and research partnerships.
The qualities that make these students valuable to Iran also make them unusually mobile.
An international Olympiad medal is a credential recognized by universities around the world. A student emerging from Sharif with an Olympiad background can compete for places at elite graduate schools, research laboratories and technology companies abroad.
The investment that makes the student valuable inside Iran therefore also increases their ability to leave it.
Maryam Mirzakhani remains the best-known example.
She won mathematics Olympiad gold medals for Iran as a teenager, studied at Sharif and later moved to the United States, where she became a professor at Stanford University and the first woman to win the Fields Medal.
Her career demonstrated both sides of Iran’s Olympiad system: its ability to identify exceptional talent and its difficulty retaining the long-term scientific benefits of that talent.
That does not mean every medalist leaves. Many remain in Iran and contribute to universities, research centers, technology companies and industry. Some who study overseas also maintain scientific ties with Iran or eventually return.
But the loss carries disproportionate weight when those leaving represent some of the most intensively selected and trained scientific talent the country produces.
The Olympiad paradox
Iran’s investment in scientific Olympiads therefore remains rational even when some of its most successful products emigrate.
The system discovers talent that might otherwise go unnoticed, raises scientific standards, gives exceptional students opportunities and produces genuine international achievements.
It also develops scientists and engineers in disciplines Iran considers essential to its economic and technological future.
Under sanctions, that logic becomes even stronger. When technology, equipment and capital are difficult to import, investing in people becomes one of the few capabilities a country can develop largely from within.
Yet that strategy depends on more than discovering talented teenagers.
Iran can identify an exceptional student at 15, provide intensive training, waive the university entrance examination, send them to Sharif and celebrate when they defeat competitors from dozens of countries.
What the Olympiad system cannot provide is the research environment, professional freedom, economic security and long-term career prospects that determine where that student chooses to live at 25 or 35.
That gap can turn Iran’s investment into an unintended subsidy for institutions abroad.
Iranian families, schools and public institutions bear much of the cost of discovering and developing globally competitive students. Foreign universities, laboratories and companies can later recruit scientists and engineers whose foundational training has already been completed.
For Iran, the implications extend beyond academia. The same talent that can strengthen a university laboratory or technology company can also contribute to aerospace, artificial intelligence, nuclear research and other strategically important sectors.
This weekend’s five astronomy gold medals show that the first part of Iran’s system continues to work exceptionally well. For a third consecutive year, Iranian students have demonstrated that they can compete with the best young scientific talent in the world.
The harder measure of success comes years later: whether Iran can offer those students a future compelling enough to keep the talent it worked so hard to discover.
"We have reached a point where we hope people don't get sick, because if they do, the end of that illness is not treatment. It is death," Salman Es'haghi, spokesman for parliament's Health and Treatment Committee, told the labor-affiliated news agency ILNA.
The pressure cannot simply be blamed on war and sanctions, Es'haghi said, accusing the authorities of failing to tackle corruption and poor decision-making as households struggle to pay for medicines, equipment and diagnostic tests.
A separate ILNA report from clinics in Tehran found the same thing from the other side: insured patients waiting weeks or months for diagnostic services, or paying privately for tests they could not get through the Social Security Organization, the state insurer that covers most of Iran's workers and retirees.
A couple sells their sheep and their car
Es'haghi described a rural couple who had sold their livestock and their Pride, the cheap Iranian-built car that was for decades the country's most common, after being told the wife needed a heart valve.
"A man and a woman from one of the villages came to see me," he said. "They said they had several sheep and a Pride, and they had sold them because they were told they needed to buy a heart valve for his wife."
The couple paid 13 billion rials for the valve, about $5,000 at Saturday's open-market rate, or six and a half years of the minimum wage, Eshaghi said. They were then told it was unsuitable and that they would need another.
"A suitable, high-quality valve costs close to 42 billion rials," he said, about $16,000, or 21 years of the minimum wage. "Which patient can pay 42 billion rials?"
Many farming families were selling animals, vehicles and other assets to cover both the equipment and the surgery, he said.
"We have unfortunately closed our eyes to our people dying because of a lack of medicine and the high cost of treatment," Es'haghi said.
Insurance leaves patients exposed
Iran's health insurance funds have stopped protecting patients from the cost of care, Es'haghi said.
"Our insurance funds have effectively declared bankruptcy, but they don't say it out loud," he said. "Because they don't acknowledge their own bankruptcy, they have shifted that bankruptcy onto the people."
More than 80 percent of treatment costs are now paid directly by patients, he said, without giving a source for the figure.
ILNA's reporting on the Social Security Organization points the same way. Nearly 9.9 million people insured by the organization in Tehran province have access to just 36 medical facilities it owns, including 16 polyclinics, according to official figures the agency cited. That is roughly one polyclinic for every 620,000 insured people.
Seeing a doctor is only the beginning
For many patients, getting an appointment does not mean they can complete the treatment prescribed.
At the Abureihan Social Security clinic in Tehran, one woman told ILNA that the ultrasound service the clinic once offered had disappeared.
"This place used to have ultrasound, but it hasn't had it for some time, and now I have to pay a huge amount outside," she said.
Another patient said the clinic had no mammography.
A middle-aged woman in severe abdominal pain said she could not afford the imaging and examinations she had been prescribed.
"I am in severe pain, but further imaging, tests and doctors are beyond what I can afford," she said.
She was the household's breadwinner, she said, earning money from weaving carpets while her husband was out of work. When she was referred to another hospital, she learned the care there would not be free either.
"I have to wait until the carpet is sold and I get the money," she said.
Weeks or months of waiting
Patients who stay inside the Social Security system face long queues instead.
Those referred to larger centers such as Milad Hospital, the organization's flagship hospital in Tehran, must often start over, ILNA reported, because diagnostic departments may accept orders only from the hospital's own doctors. That means another appointment, another consultation, and another wait for imaging or tests.
"These appointments are really useful for someone with a chronic illness who needs constant monitoring, not for someone who has an acute problem right now, today," one patient said.
The squeeze is hardest on retirees and lower-income households who cannot turn to private care.
An elderly woman said she kept making the long trip to a Social Security clinic because private doctors were too expensive, even though she still had to get some medicines and tests elsewhere.
"It's crowded, it's far away and getting here is difficult for me, but because the doctors here are good and my treatment costs less, I still come," she said.
'Why don't we import medicine?'
Es'haghi rejected the argument that Iran's medicine shortages can be explained by sanctions and the war.
"Whenever something happens, we say there is a war, there is no medicine, there are sanctions," he said.
Iran should be able to use its relationships with Russia and China to obtain medicines and pharmaceutical ingredients, he said.
"We can import medicine and pharmaceutical raw materials from Russia and China. Why don't we?" he said. "If we are vigilant, if there is the will and if we fight corruption, I can tell you seriously that supplying medicine and pharmaceutical raw materials has nothing to do with the war."
Figures presented at official meetings showed some pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies had sharply increased their profits during the war, he said.
"Why don't they tell these companies that during wartime they should at least accept a minimum profit margin so that people don't face such hardship?"
Inflation deepens the squeeze
The health crisis is unfolding as household purchasing power collapses.
Consumer prices in September were 89.8 percent higher than a year earlier, according to the Statistical Center of Iran, and average inflation over the preceding twelve months reached 73.6 percent. Food and drink prices had already risen 127.5 percent year on year in August.
The rial's fall to record lows has raised the local cost of imported medicines, equipment and pharmaceutical ingredients.
The strain is visible in the volume of demand on a system that cannot meet it. Social Security facilities in Tehran recorded more than 18.1 million outpatient visits in the Iranian year that ended in March, including about 8.5 million doctor consultations and 9.6 million visits for diagnostic and other services.
For poorer patients, each extra appointment means transport costs, lost wages and another delay. The result, ILNA said, is that some workers and retirees are forced to choose between paying privately, waiting, or abandoning part of their treatment.
Haalvsh, which covers developments in Sistan-Baluchestan, said five members of the IRGC-Quds’s Fatemiyoun militia were killed in the Rudmahi area near Zahedan after an explosive device detonated beside their vehicle and gunmen opened fire.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards gave a different account, confirming a roadside bombing in the province but saying one fighter was killed. The IRGC Ground Force said what it described as "terrorists" had planted a bomb along a road in Sistan-Baluchestan and carried out an indiscriminate attack.
The Guards did not identify the person killed, mention Fatemiyoun or give a precise location for the incident.
Conflicting accounts of Zahedan attack
Haalvsh said the attack took place at about 6:30 a.m. as the men were patrolling the Kaleh-Pedeh route in the Rudmahi area in a Land Cruiser equipped with a DShK heavy machine gun.
Citing eyewitnesses, the outlet said an explosive device was detonated as the vehicle passed and that gunmen opened fire after the blast destroyed the vehicle.
The identities of those reported killed have not been released.
Haalvsh said local sources continued to put the death toll at five and identified all of those killed as Fatemiyoun members, but said it had not been able to independently verify the precise number of deaths.
Fatemiyoun is a militia linked to the IRGC's Quds Force and made up largely of Afghan Shiites. It was formed with Iranian support and fought alongside forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad during Syria's civil war. The United States sanctioned the group in 2019.
Haalvsh said Friday's incident was the second deadly attack on forces it identified as Fatemiyoun in Rudmahi in less than a month. It reported in September that four members deployed in the area by the IRGC were killed when gunmen attacked them during a patrol.
The outlet has also reported the deployment of hundreds of Fatemiyoun members to several parts of Sistan-Baluchestan, including areas around Zahedan, Mirjaveh, Rask, Saravan, Zabol, Chabahar, Konarak and Iranshahr.
Hours of fighting in Rask
The violence on Friday was not limited to Zahedan.
Haalvsh said Iranian military and security forces moved in Rask county at about 5:30 a.m., triggering fighting with armed men that lasted more than six hours.
Heavy gunfire and explosions were heard during the confrontation, according to the outlet, which said reinforcements and additional military equipment were sent to the area.
Armored vehicles, pickup trucks and civilian cars with private license plates were seen at the scene, while a vehicle carrying a heavy weapon was also deployed, Haalvsh reported.
Local sources cited by the outlet said reconnaissance quadcopters and explosive drones were used during the operation.
Haalvsh said the identity and affiliation of the gunmen remained unknown and that no reliable information had emerged about casualties or damage.
IRGC-linked Fars news agency, citing an unnamed source, said security forces had begun an operation against armed groups in Rask on Friday morning and that "a number" of gunmen had been killed. Fars said the operation was continuing.
Intelligence facility targeted
An intelligence ministry facility in Nokabad, the administrative center of Taftan county, was also attacked by gunmen early Friday, according to the Baloch Human Rights Documentation Network.
The group said the attackers fired at the building. Local sources also reported an explosion and said a grenade may have been used.
No casualties or damage were immediately reported, and no individual or group had taken responsibility for the attack.
Fighting follows deadly clash a day earlier
Friday's incidents came a day after another hours-long confrontation near Zahedan.
On Thursday, the IRGC said six gunmen were killed during fighting with security forces in the Manzelab area. The Guards' Quds regional headquarters said its forces had identified and "destroyed" what it described as an armed "terrorist-Takfiri" cell that had been preparing an attack.
Haalvsh said that clash began at about 6 a.m. and continued for several hours, with heavy gunfire and rocket-propelled grenade fire heard in the area.
The IRGC said explosive devices were recovered but did not identify the armed group or name those killed.
A police officer, Alireza Sanchouli, was also killed in a separate armed attack on a checkpoint at the entrance to Rask, according to Iranian reports.
At least one person was killed earlier in the week during another confrontation with security forces in Iranshahr.
Last month, a roughly nine-hour battle in the Bakhshan area of Saravan killed three IRGC members and four gunmen. Reports at the time linked the armed side to the People's Fighters Front, an alliance formed in late 2025 that includes several Baluch armed groups, among them Jaish al-Adl.
Iranian authorities regularly describe armed groups operating in Sistan-Baluchestan as terrorist organizations. The southeastern province has seen repeated armed attacks, insurgent activity and clashes between security forces and gunmen in recent weeks.
