United States President Donald Trump says Washington might strike Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain “very quickly”, in simply the newest in a collection of threats he has made in opposition to the closely fortified underground web site situated subsequent to the bombed-out Natanz enrichment advanced.
Simply hours after he made that risk, an Iranian oil tanker off Kharg Island was struck by 4 US missiles, based on Iranian information outlet Khabar Fouri. Kharg Island is the primary hub for Iran’s oil exports, dealing with about 90 %.
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Trump made the risk in opposition to Pickaxe Mountain as he was talking to reporters within the Oval Workplace on Friday, saying the US is aware of “everyone that’s shifting at Pickaxe” and throughout Iran.
His remarks echoed an analogous risk he made again in mid-July, when he acknowledged on the Hugh Hewitt Present: “We’re going to take out Pickaxe Mountain. Inform the Iranians to be prepared … We’ll most likely give Pickaxe a shot comparatively quickly.”
The newest risk comes greater than six months into the conflict that the US and Israel launched on Iran on February 28, amid combined messages in regards to the conflict from the Trump administration.
On Friday, Trump sought to downplay the conflict in Iran, calling it “small potatoes”, whereas a day earlier, at a White Home information briefing, Vice President JD Vance appeared to recommend the battle had cooled and to shrug off an alleged US strike on a marriage in southern Iran with “sometimes things happen“.
At a White Home briefing this week, Vance stated of the battle with Iran that he “wouldn’t name it a conflict” and claimed there was “no energetic taking pictures proper now”.
However the US and Iran have exchanged assaults this week, together with a US hit near Iran’s oil infrastructure on Kharg Island.
In the meantime, talks associated to Iran’s nuclear programme have remained in limbo since a 60-day negotiating window expired in mid-August and not using a deal.
Iran says it isn’t enterprise any work on the Natanz nuclear web site.
Its Khatam al-Anbiya central navy headquarters has warned that bombing the close by mountain would quantity to a renewal of conflict throughout the area, at a time when the Trump administration would like to maintain the conflict contained earlier than pivotal mid-term elections.
So why has Pickaxe Mountain change into the newest focus of Trump’s threats – once more?
What’s Pickaxe Mountain?
Recognized in Iran as Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, the positioning sits roughly 220km (140 miles) south of the capital Tehran, in Isfahan province, and simply 2km (1.2 miles) from the Natanz enrichment plant.
US intelligence stories point out that the ability has been excavated deep contained in the mountain, beneath lots of of metres of strong granite rock, to guard it from highly effective bombs designed to penetrate bunkers.
The primary chambers are thought to lie at the very least 100 metres (330ft) underground.
Some Western analysts have speculated that the mountain was meant to deal with an undeclared enrichment plant, a hedge in opposition to assaults on Iran’s recognized services.
The Institute for Science and Worldwide Safety, which tracks the positioning by satellite tv for pc, has assessed that it’s nonetheless beneath building and never but operational.
Nevertheless, Iran has at all times maintained that it’s creating a nuclear energy programme solely, and doesn’t have plans to construct a nuclear weapon.
Why does Pickaxe Mountain matter?
As a result of it’s intact.
Pickaxe Mountain was left alone throughout the US’s June 2025 strikes on Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan on the finish of the 12-day Israel conflict on Iran, and has escaped the present conflict nearly totally; the Institute for Science and Worldwide Safety has recorded solely the destruction of a automobile on a close-by spoil pile.
With Iran’s centrifuge manufacturing base and enrichment halls at different websites broken within the conflict, analysts see the tunnels as the obvious place for Tehran to rebuild: For part manufacturing, meeting or enrichment of uranium.
The Wall Road Journal reported in July that Israel had handed Washington intelligence suggesting hundreds of centrifuges had been moved inside the ability late final yr, a declare the US has not confirmed.
Trump has been much less alarmist than Israel.
Centrifuges solely matter if there may be uranium to place via them; the machines focus uranium gasoline, and and not using a provide of it they can’t produce something.
How a lot injury has been achieved to Iran’s nuclear websites?
In line with most estimates, a substantial quantity.
The European Council on Overseas Relations estimates that the 2025 strikes possible destroyed lots of the roughly 18,000 centrifuges then working at Iran’s Natanz and Fordow services, together with a number of centrifuge manufacturing websites and Ardakan, Iran’s solely yellowcake milling plant. Yellowcake is powdered uranium focus obtained from milled uranium ore.
Almost 4,000 extra centrifuges had been put in however idle on the time; nonetheless, they could have survived the strikes.
The Worldwide Atomic Vitality Company (IAEA) confirmed additional injury to the doorway buildings of Natanz’s underground enrichment plant in March 2026, though it detected no extra affect on the plant itself.
The Institute for Science and Worldwide Safety reported in June that tunnel entrances in any respect three major websites stay sealed, that there is no such thing as a proof of any enrichment going down, and that the centrifuge programme nonetheless seems to have been destroyed.
Didn’t Trump say Iran’s nuclear websites had already been destroyed?
Sure. After the June 2025 assaults, Trump stated the three websites had been “utterly and completely obliterated”.
Nevertheless, simply days later, a leaked preliminary US Defence Intelligence Company evaluation concluded that the websites had been considerably broken however not destroyed, estimating that the strikes had set Iran’s nuclear programme again by lower than six months.
The scenario right this moment stays unclear.
“Nobody actually is aware of what the state of Iran’s nuclear programme is at this second; there’s lots of uncertainty and ambiguity about how a lot injury Iran has suffered because of these final two wars,” Nader Hashemi, a professor of Center East politics at Georgetown College, instructed Al Jazeera.
Iran is at the moment believed to be holding about 440kg (970lb) of uranium enriched to 60 percent.
However having the fabric is simply a part of the equation, Hashemi stated.
To ensure that Iran to supply a nuclear weapon, it must enrich that uranium as much as 90 %.
That will require entry to its centrifuges, “of which we don’t know to what extent they could have been broken”, he stated.
No inspector has entered the bombed websites, and Trump’s framing has shifted from “obliteration” to a promise to hit any web site the place Iran is “even excited about nuclear”.
What will we find out about Iran’s nuclear programme?
Lower than at any level in 20 years.
Simply earlier than the US-Israel assaults on Iran in June 2025, the IAEA verified about 10 tonnes of enriched uranium in whole, together with the 440kg stockpile enriched to 60 %.
In idea, this quantity of enriched uranium – ought to it’s enriched to 90 % – is sufficient to produce greater than 10 nuclear warheads, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi told Al Jazeera in early March. It’s unclear the place this inventory could also be, nonetheless.
Iran suspended cooperation with the company after the strikes, and the IAEA now says it has no approach to report on the scale, location or composition of that stockpile, although it believes a lot of the 60-percent materials is bottled up in tunnels at Isfahan.
On Friday, Trump claimed once more that the US had prevented Iran from creating a nuclear weapon, arguing that Washington’s intervention had protected Israel and the broader Center East.
Tehran insists the programme is peaceable, and has dismissed Washington’s deal with Pickaxe Mountain as a manufactured pretext for attacking it.
