President Donald Trump has once again put Iran’s most fortified nuclear-linked facility in the crosshairs, warning that American forces could strike the underground complex known as Pickaxe Mountain in the near future. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office around September 4–5, 2026, Trump said the site could be hit “very soon,” pointing to what he described as close, ongoing surveillance of activity there.

“We may hit Pickaxe very soon because if there was anything going on with Pickaxe,” Trump told reporters, adding that US intelligence — including space-based assets — is tracking movement at the site and across the country. “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.”

The remarks extend a string of warnings Trump first issued in July 2026, during the height of the conflict involving the United States, Israel and Iran. At that time, he said the US would “take out Pickaxe Mountain,” told Iranians to “be ready,” and promised the site would be struck “pretty soon, and very heavily.” He has at various points described a potential strike as a “nice big fat shot right in the front door,” while also acknowledging that observed activity at the site has, at times, appeared limited.

Why Pickaxe Mountain matters

Pickaxe Mountain — known in Persian as Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, or Kūh-e Kolang — sits in the Zagros range in central Iran’s Isfahan province, roughly one to two kilometers south of the Natanz uranium enrichment complex and about 220 kilometers south of Tehran. The mountain itself rises to around 1,600 meters above sea level.

Iran began digging a deep underground tunnel network into the mountain around 2020, shortly after an above-ground advanced centrifuge assembly facility at Natanz was damaged in an incident widely attributed to sabotage. Iranian officials have said the new site is intended for the production and assembly of advanced centrifuges. Western analysts, including researchers at the Institute for Science and International Security, believe it could also be built to support centrifuge enrichment or the secure storage of sensitive nuclear materials.

Why the site is so hard to eliminate

DEPTH
Main underground halls are estimated at 80–100+ meters beneath hard granite or similar volcanic rock — deeper than Fordow by many assessments.
ORDNANCE
Experts question whether even the US GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the largest conventional bunker-buster in the arsenal, could reliably reach the internal chambers.
LIKELY TARGETS
Analysts say any strike may instead focus on tunnel entrances, ventilation shafts, power lines, or access roads rather than the chambers themselves.
STATUS
One of the last major nuclear-linked sites left largely untouched by the June 2025 and 2026 rounds of US and Israeli strikes that heavily damaged Natanz and other facilities.

Construction at Pickaxe Mountain has continued despite the wider air campaign. Satellite imagery from as recently as mid-2026 has shown vehicles on-site, work on entrances and access roads, and evidence of hardening or partial filling of tunnel sections — signs, analysts say, that Iran intends the facility to remain operational for the long term.

Reports cited by the Wall Street Journal have suggested Iran may have moved centrifuges or portions of its highly enriched uranium stockpile into the mountain for protection, or for future use.

That possibility is central to why the site keeps resurfacing in American and Israeli threat assessments. Its scale, and its proximity to the already heavily damaged Natanz complex, make it a plausible location for rebuilding enrichment or centrifuge-assembly capacity that would be extremely difficult to eliminate from the air alone.

A verification problem as much as a military one

International inspectors have not had full access to the site, and Iranian officials have at times denied any nuclear-related activity there. Most independent analysts assess that Pickaxe Mountain was not yet fully operational as of mid-2026 — but the continued construction is precisely what keeps it a top-priority concern for US and allied officials focused on preventing Iran from reconstituting a nuclear weapons capability.

Timeline of the threats

  • JULY 2026 Amid the active US–Israel–Iran conflict, Trump says the US will “take out Pickaxe Mountain,” tells Iranians to “be ready,” and warns the site will be hit “pretty soon, and very heavily.”
  • MID-2026 Satellite imagery reportedly shows continued Iranian construction activity at the site, including vehicle movement and work on entrances and roads.
  • SEPTEMBER 4–5, 2026 Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump renews the warning, saying the US “may hit Pickaxe very soon” and citing space-based surveillance of activity at the site and across Iran.

Trump has framed the repeated threats as part of a broader effort to ensure Iran cannot develop, or rebuild, a nuclear weapons capability. Any actual strike on Pickaxe Mountain, however, would mark a significant escalation — one complicated by the site’s depth, the surrounding geology, and the wider regional risks that come with targeting a facility of this scale so close to a population center already scarred by earlier rounds of strikes.