Secret Israeli military bunker located under Tel Aviv tower struck by Iran, analysis shows

Jack Poulson and Wyatt Reed | The Grayzone

The Grayzone has geolocated the underground bunker of an important military command and control center nestled within a densely populated Tel Aviv neighborhood. Known as 'Site 81,' the U.S.-built facility houses a hyper-secretive intelligence base.

When Iran struck a series of targets in the heart of north Tel Aviv with ballistic missiles on June 13, Israeli authorities immediately cordoned off the area to prevent journalists from filming the damage. "The building on this compound was just hit," Trey Yingst of Fox News reported as he arrived that evening at the site of HaKirya, Israel's Defense Ministry headquarters, and the nearby Azrieli Center. But within seconds, Israeli police officers arrived to aggressively shunt Yingst away from where he was standing, just north of the HaKirya Bridge on the west side of Menachem Begin Road.

That day, Iranian missiles struck the north tower of the Da Vinci apartment complex roughly 550 meters southwest of Yingst's location. The Grayzone has determined that the building sits immediately south of the "Canarit" / "Kannarit" Israeli Air Force towers and above an underground military intelligence bunker jointly administered by the US and Israeli militaries. According to an analysis of leaked emails, public documents, and Israeli news reports, the location is host to a highly secretive, electromagnetically shielded intelligence facility known as "Site 81."

Israel aggressively censors information relating to its urban military and intelligence facilities while simultaneously accusing its adversaries of engaging in 'human shielding' - a practice of protecting military targets with civilian populations that is prohibited by international humanitarian law. While the existence of a U.S. Army project to expand Site 81 to a 6,000 square-meter facility was widely reported from government records circa 2013, the specific location remained unknown. 

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