In the densely populated neighbourhoods of southern Tehran, the 11th Criminal Investigation Base once stood as a mundane symbol of local law enforcement. Its detectives investigated economic crimes, fraud and petty thefts.The building housed no ballistic missiles, no uranium centrifuges and no military command centres. Today, it is a crater. In the opening wave of the United States-Israel war on Iran, warplanes wiped the local police station off the map. Satellite imagery provided by Planet Labs shows the destruction of the 11th Criminal Investigation Base in southern Tehran on February 26 and March 6, 2026. [Al Jazeera/Planet]It was not an isolated incident. An investigation by Al Jazeera’s Digital Investigations unit has verified that at least 75 internal security sites were destroyed or damaged in bombardments by Israel and the US from February 28 to March 10. The targeted facilities included local police stations, criminal investigation headquarters, public security offices and checkpoints operated by the Basij paramilitary force.Al Jazeera mapped the strikes using open-source data, cross-referencing field reports with satellite imagery to confirm the destruction. However, conducting independent verification has grown increasingly difficult. On March 6, commercial satellite providers Planet Labs and Vantor restricted imagery over the Middle East, later expanding the blackout to impose a 14-day delay on all images of Iran.While the companies said the blackout prevents hostile actors from endangering civilians, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein recently revealed a leaked US Space Force directive dictating how commercial satellite firms describe damage. The leak exposed a deliberate US effort to cont …
