US President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States may strike Iran's Pickaxe Mountain very soon, returning to a threat he has repeated against the country's most heavily fortified nuclear site since July.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump credited American intelligence agencies with close monitoring of the facility. "We know everybody that's moving at Pickaxe; we know everybody that's moving everywhere all over Iran. And if anything goes bad, we hit them; we hit them hard," he said. He tied that intelligence picture to US space capabilities and the Space Force.In the same remarks, Trump played down the confrontation with Tehran, describing it as a military conflict rather than a war.
Hours later, an Iranian oil tanker off Kharg Island was hit by four US missiles, according to the Iranian outlet Khabar Fouri. Kharg is Iran's main export terminal and handles roughly 90 percent of its oil.Pickaxe Mountain, known in Iran as Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, sits about 220 kilometers south of Tehran in Isfahan province, roughly two kilometers from the bombed-out Natanz enrichment plant. US intelligence reporting indicates the complex was excavated deep inside the mountain beneath hundreds of meters of granite, with its main chambers thought to lie at least 100 meters underground.
Iran declared the site to be a centrifuge assembly facility in 2021.The Wall Street Journal reported that Israeli intelligence assessed Iran moved centrifuges into Pickaxe Mountain last fall. That report left open whether the transfer was intended to establish an enrichment site or simply to shield the equipment from destruction.
The administration has not said publicly whether it has confirmed the transfer.Military analysts remain divided over what a strike could achieve. The depth of the complex may place its main chambers beyond the reliable reach of the GBU-57, the largest conventional bunker-buster in the American arsenal, leaving open the possibility that airstrikes would seal the tunnel entrances without destroying the interior.Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya military command has said that an American attack on the site would amount to an explosion of war in the region.
Tehran maintains that no work is under way at Natanz.Trump first threatened the site in mid-July, telling the Hugh Hewitt Show that the US would take out Pickaxe Mountain and that Iranians should be ready. On July 21 he told reporters the US would hit the area pretty soon and very heavily.
Nuclear talks have been stalled since a 60-day negotiating window expired in mid-August without an agreement.
