Bellingcat has identified at least 80 police stations or infrastructure related to law enforcement agencies and the Basij paramilitary group that has been damaged or destroyed in the first three weeks of the United States and Israel’s war against Iran. Experts told Bellingcat that both countries aim
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Bellingcat has identified at least 80 police stations or infrastructure related to law enforcement agencies and the Basij paramilitary group that has been damaged or destroyed in the first three weeks of the United States and Israel’s war against Iran. Experts told Bellingcat that bothcountries aim to degrade the Iranian regime’s “repressive capacity”.
Combined, the US and Israel have conductedthousands of strikes during the course of the 2026 war in Iran. Targets range from Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) sites, Navy vessels to Iranian weapons manufacturers.
In early March, a Bellingcat analysis using satellite imagery and available photos and videos identified police stations as another apparent target, with at least 15 damaged or destroyed in the capital, Tehran.
We also identified multiple strikes against police infrastructure in the country’s north and west; these areas were targeted by the Israel Defence Forces according to a map released by the IDF on March 31.
“We are providing the brave people of Iran with the conditions to take their destiny into their own hands,” declared the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs official X account, along with a photo of a destroyed police station.
اینجا کلانتری ۱۲۱ سلیمانیه در خیابان نبرد تهران بود.
ما شرایطی را برای مردم شجاع ایران فراهم میکنیم تا سرنوشت خود را در دست بگیرند. pic.twitter.com/VSm6YVvIwZ
In all, the majority of strikes Bellingcat analysed focused on police stations (30 incidents) and command centers or headquarters (29 incidents). Locations also include sites related to Basij, a plainclothes paramilitary organisation (9) affiliated with the IRGC that were “involved in the deadly crackdown” of protests in January 2026, others are associated with special forces (3) and traffic (2) or diplomatic (2) police compounds.
Due to commercial satellite companies limiting access to imagery over Iran and neighbouring countries we relied on Sentinel-2 imagery data to help verify the incidents, as well as videos and photos, some of which were also verified by independent geolocators and contributors to the Geoconfirmed volunteer community and confirmed by Bellingcat researchers.
Location data was partly determined using open source mapping data either from Wikimapia, OpenStreetMap or Google Maps. When video footage or photos were available for incidents reportedly targeting police stations, the location was verified with geolocation and satellite imagery analysis using either Planet Labs medium resolution PlanetScope data (restricted to imagery collected by March 9) or low resolution Sentinel-2 data.
Some locations were discovered utilising location data taken from OpenStreetMap using Overpass Turbo and comparing that with available Sentinel-2 data throughout Iran.
Map showing geolocated incidents in Iran. Click the markers to view the coordinates, sources, and verification notes. Map: Bellingcat/Miguel Ramalho
A Problem of Scale
Israel has released multiplevideos showing the targeting of bases and checkpoints belonging to the Basij. In mid-March, the IDF announced the killing of the paramilitary group’s commander, Gholamreza Soleimani.
Targeting the Basij is part of Israel’s and the US’ agenda “to degrade the regime’s repressive capacity,” Ali Vaez, the director of International Crisis Group Iran Project, told Bellingcat. Police stations are “not involved in repression in the way that crowd control police or Basij centers are”, so targeting them “appears more aimed at preventing the Islamic Republic from being able to maintain control internally,” he said.
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Vaez told Bellingcat that, when considered alongside the broader range of targets, including industrial factories, the widespread targeting of police stations is part of a strategy “to make Iran ungovernable for the existing regime or whatever comes after”.
Vaez was skeptical about the short term effects: “It’s a problem of scale. Iran is such a large country, even if you are able to completely destroy, not just degrade, the capacity of the regime in policing, oppressing, etc – it really requires not just maybe weeks but maybe months if not years.”
The Risk of Civilian Casualties
As of April 7, the Iranian Human Rights Activists News Agency estimates there’ve been more than 1,700 civilian fatalities during the war.
Several police stations are situated in densely populated urban areas such as Tehran. Stations are used by civilians for various reasons including renewing driving licences, so if these buildings are targeted “during working hours and not in the middle of the night then risk is higher for these people,” Vaez said.
Map showing geolocated incidents in Tehran. Click the markers to view the coordinates, sources, and verification notes.Map: Bellingcat/Miguel Ramalho
A recent joint Airwars, Center for Civilians in Conflict and Human Rights Activists in Iran report detailing the first month of civilian casualties included a section on the worsening situation for detainees in Iranian prisons — including police stations that have been targeted.
“I was detained in the holding cell of [Police Station 148] for ten days, along with four other activists. Now it looks like nothing is left of that station but ruins. I can’t even recognize where the detention area was. I keep wondering what happened to the people who were being held there during the attack. – Activist, told HRA upon seeing photos of the police station after recent US/Israeli airstrikes.”
Footage shared and geolocated by the BBC’s Shayan Sardarizadeh showed Police Station 148 damaged after an apparent strike in mid-March.
The main building of Tehran’s 148 police station and its courtyard, located on Enghelab Street, has been severely damaged in air strikes conducted on Friday.
The adjacent Hamoon Theatre also sustained some damage.
One destroyed police station identified by Bellingcat in the city of Mahabad in northeastern Iran led to apparent damage to an Iranian Red Crescent Society building located next door. According to Iran’s Tasnim News agency (an IRGC-affiliated media outlet sanctioned by the EU, the US and Canada), one Red Crescent employee was injured in the attack.
The police station adjacent to the Red Crescent building isn’t identified on any mapping services, though there are reports “Police Station 11” was targeted the same day.
Annotated Google Earth image showing the location of a destroyed police station and partially destroyed Red Crescent building in Mahabad, West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. A video shared on Telegram by mamlekate on March 6 shows the view of the destruction from the ground. Buildings behind the destroyed police station match with those seen in the Google Earth imagery.
Israel has also targeted checkpoints operated by Basij members.
Bellingcat examined two cases showing Israeli strikes on checkpoints while civilians were passing. In one video, a strike hits a checkpoint as five motorbikes and a vehicle go by.
View of a Basij checkpoint in Tehran targeted by the IDF. Immediately before the explosion is visible in the video, there are five motorbikes and a car next to the checkpoint. Source: YouTube/IDF
In another IDF video, a yellow bus is immediately adjacent to the checkpoint when it is hit. It is unclear how many people were on the bus at the time of the strike or if anyone was injured.
View of a Basij checkpoint in Tehran targeted by the IDF. Immediately before the explosion, there is a yellow bus visible next to the targeted checkpoint. Source: IDF
“I have been watching the reporting on these Basij strikes and the use of the Mikholit in particular in open urban areas. It is IDF standard—using precision munitions and even sometimes “low collateral” munitions but in a reckless manner that still puts the civilian population at risk,” Wes J. Bryant, a defence and national security analyst formerly with the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence told Bellingcat.
Questions Over Legality
International Humanitarian Lawdefines civilians as “persons who are not members of the armed forces”. Police officers fall under that definition, according to Adil Haque, Professor of Law at Rutgers University and Executive Editor at Just Security. “As a rule, police are civilians and may not be attacked unless they take a direct part in hostilities,” Haque told Bellingcat. National security analyst Bryant agreed, adding that targeting police “does not stand up to legal scrutiny”.
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In an email to Bellingcat, the IDF noted “that the police form part of Iran’s internal security apparatus, which also forms part of Iran’s armed forces, under Iran’s own domestic legislation. In every strike, the IDF takes feasible precautions in order to mitigate incidental harm to civilians and civilian objects to the extent possible under the circumstances.”
Police are indeed “part of the country’s armed forces. By that logic, anything with a flag on it is a legitimate target,” Ali Vaez, the director of International Crisis Group Iran Project, said.
Although Basij is a paramilitary group, any strikes against it would require precautions to minimise harm to civilians, Haque told Bellingcat. “Since the hostilities almost entirely involve aerial bombardment, the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from strikes on Basij members who qualify as combatants is extremely low, so significant harm to nearby civilians would be disproportionate and illegal,” he said.
When asked about potential civilian casualties in the checkpoint strikes, the IDF told Bellingcat that since the Basij are subordinate to the IRGC and are therefore part of the armed forces, they are regarded as lawful military targets. Regarding the checkpoint strikes specifically, they stated “precision munitions and surveillance means were used in the strikes, as part of the precautions taken under the circumstances to mitigate expected incidental harm”.
Bellingcat reached out to US Central Command (CENTCOM) to ask if the US had any role in the police station strikes identified but received no official comment at the time of publication.
