Trump warns US may target Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain site soon

President Donald Trump said on July 13 that the United States may strike Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain “pretty soon, and very heavily,” marking the most explicit threat yet against a facility that has quietly become one of the most consequential pieces of real estate in the Middle East. The site, located roughly one to two kilometers south of Iran’s Natanz nuclear complex in central Iran, sits at least 100 meters underground, carved into solid granite. That depth matters. It puts the facility near or beyond the effective reach of the most powerful conventional bunker-buster bombs in the US arsenal. What is Pickaxe Mountain Construction at Pickaxe Mountain began in the fall of 2020, shortly after sabotage damaged the above-ground facility at Natanz. Iran declared the site to the International Atomic Energy Agency as a future complex for producing advanced centrifuges, the machines that enrich uranium. Iranian officials maintain the facility is intended for peaceful nuclear purposes. Western intelligence agencies are less convinced. Israeli intelligence has relayed concerns that Iran may have relocated centrifuges to Pickaxe Mountain, though US officials have not independently confirmed th...