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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 that assessment. Satellite imagery from as recently as mid-2026 shows ongoing construction at the site, but no operational activity has been detected.
Why it hasn’t been hit yet
Prior rounds of US-Israeli strikes in June 2025 and during the broader 2026 conflict deliberately left Pickaxe Mountain untouched. That wasn’t an oversight. It reflected a calculation that the site wasn’t yet operational and that hitting it posed unique challenges.
Those challenges are mostly geological. At 100-plus meters of depth beneath granite, the facility sits in a category that defense planners describe with uncomfortable honesty as “very hard to kill.” Experts have openly questioned whether conventional US bunker-buster munitions, including the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, can effectively reach and destroy infrastructure buried that deep in hard rock.
The geopolitical stakes
Tehran’s response to the latest warning has been predictable but pointed. Iranian officials have said that an attack on Pickaxe Mountain would dramatically escalate tensions.
The IAEA’s role adds another layer. Iran declared the site to international inspectors, which Tehran frames as evidence of transparency. Critics counter that declaring a facility’s existence is not the same as granting full access to it, and that the depth and hardening of the installation suggest purposes beyond what Iran has publicly acknowledged.
For global markets, the threat introduces fresh uncertainty into an already jittery landscape. Oil prices have historically spiked on credible military threats involving Iran, given the country’s proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s petroleum passes.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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