NCS
By Jessie Yeung, NCS
(NCS) — President Donald Trump continues to say that the US will attack Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain – turning consideration to the suspected underground nuclear web site the place Israel believes Tehran has saved a part of its enriched uranium stockpile and superior enrichment centrifuges.
“We’ll be hitting that area very probably pretty soon. And there’s not a thing they can do about it,” Trump said on Tuesday.
In response, Tehran warned that that any US attack on Iranian nuclear amenities could be handled as an enlargement of the struggle in the area, state media reported early Wednesday.
Here’s what we find out about Pickaxe Mountain.
What is it?
Pickaxe Mountain is a closely fortified facility positioned deep underground in the middle of the nation, a few mile south of the Natanz uranium-enrichment facility beforehand bombed by the US and Israel – making it a troublesome goal for the US and Israel, and for any potential floor operation.
The facility is buried no less than 100 meters (328 ft) underneath a big mountain referred to as Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, with Kolang translating to Pickaxe, according to the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS).
Construction on the facility started in 2020; at the time, Iran declared the facility to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency as a future facility to assemble the centrifuges that make nuclear gasoline.
The facility is largely shrouded in thriller; there aren’t any publicly obtainable schematics, and consultants largely glean their insights by analyzing satellite tv for pc imagery. Through these photographs, ISIS stated in a latest report, we all know the facility has a number of tunnel complexes, a big safety perimeter, and entrances which were hardened by concrete for defense from potential airstrikes.
The facility is believed to not but be operational, with building ongoing. Those efforts could have intensified in the previous yr, with building rising after Israel and the US focused Iran’s different nuclear amenities in June 2025. Among the amenities struck was the Natanz uranium enrichment complicated, only a few miles from Pickaxe Mountain.
There are a number of doable causes for this elevated exercise at the Pickaxe web site, stated the Center for Strategic & International Studies. Iran could possibly be constructing centrifuges, because it advised the UN it will; it could possibly be increasing its mission, bringing over operations from the different destroyed amenities; or it could possibly be making a secret facility to complement uranium, a key element to make nuclear weapons.
Is there enriched uranium there?
Israeli intelligence believes Iran moved part of its enriched uranium stockpile and advanced enrichment centrifuges to Pickaxe Mountain after final June’s assaults, an Israeli supply acquainted with the matter advised NCS.
During that 12-day struggle, Israel struck three key Iranian nuclear facilities – Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow – and killed various high scientists concerned in nuclear analysis and improvement. The US joined the battle close to the finish of the struggle, hanging the same three facilities with far more highly effective bombs, assaults during which Trump claimed Iran’s nuclear capabilities had been “obliterated.” But neither the US, nor Israel struck Pickaxe Mountain.
US and UN intelligence later advised that elements of Iran’s nuclear program stay intact, albeit broken. And it since grow to be a shared aim of each the US and Israel to both make Iran eliminate its almost 1,000-pound stockpile of extremely enriched uranium, or to take it from them.
NCS beforehand reported that Iran had dramatically escalated efforts to seal off its cache of close to bomb-grade uranium, intentionally collapsing tunnels and booby-trapping entrances with explosive mines.
When requested on Tuesday whether or not Iran had moved its superior centrifuges to Pickaxe Mountain, Trump seemingly downplayed the Israeli stories, saying: “We don’t have it on record.”
Earlier in July, a senior safety supply in Tehran advised NCS that the claims of nuclear actions going down at Pickaxe Mountain had been false.
Iran maintains that its nuclear program is solely for peaceable vitality functions, and plans to construct extra nuclear energy crops to fulfill home vitality wants and release extra oil for export.
Could it’s attacked by the US and Israel?
Analysts have combined opinions.
One nonproliferation knowledgeable, Andrea Stricker, advised NCS that Trump ought to act to disable Pickaxe Mountain to stop Iran from “reconstituting an enrichment or nuclear weapons option, and having access to thousands of centrifuges that represent the remnants of its nuclear program.”
While a floor operation could be complicated, the ISIS report identified a number of doable avenues for attack.
The secretive facility would want air flow, heating, cooling, deliveries, energy provide, and personnel – which all current “vulnerabilities that the U.S. and Israel would seem to be able to exploit,” it stated.
Strikes, although, could not have the desired impression as a result of the core a part of the facility is doubtless deeply buried.
James Acton, who co-leads the Carnegie Endowment’s nuclear coverage work, posted on X that he doubts the US can do far more than collapse entry tunnels at the Pickaxe Mountain facility. “That isn’t a game changer,” Acton stated.
The-NCS-Wire
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NCS’s Davis Winkie, Tal Shalev, Mohammed Tawfeeq and Catherine Nicholls contributed to this report.