Satellite imagery has detected recent construction at the underground facility.
WASHINGTON — As he pledged further strikes on Iran, President Donald Trump said Monday that the United States could target an underground nuclear facility known as Pickaxe Mountain.
“Pickaxe is a possible target for a nice, big, fat shot right in the front door,” Trump said in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.
"We're going to take out Pickaxe Mountain,” Trump added. “Tell the Iranians to be ready. Let them know we're coming, okay? There's not a damn thing they can do about it.”
The Iranian government has described the deeply buried, heavily fortified facility as a centrifuge assembly plant. But Tehran has barred international inspectors from accessing Pickaxe Mountain, fueling concerns it is being used for other covert purposes, such as uranium enrichment.
Trump said Monday the US government has “a lot of eyes” on the site and that there is “no activity” there. But the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, which studies Iran's nuclear sites, said vehicle activity observed in satellite images from late June indicates that construction inside the Pickaxe Mountain tunnel complex and hardening of its entrance is ongoing.
The Pickaxe Mountain facility is located about one mile away from Natanz, one of the three nuclear sites that the US military bombed in June 2025. Since then, Iran has only allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit sites that don't pose a proliferation risk, such as the Tehran Research Reactor and Iran’s commercial nuclear facility in Bushehr.
Negotiators for the United States and Iran were expected to discuss inspector access during the 60-day period for nuclear talks set out by their preliminary agreement. In Monday’s interview, Trump downplayed the agreement, calling it a “test” that "didn’t mean much.”
"We're going to hit them very hard tonight, and we're going to hit them hard tomorrow,” he said.
Shortly after Trump's remarks, US Central Command announced it had begun a third consecutive night of strikes against Iran "at the commander in chief's direction," saying the operations would "continue imposing a heavy cost on Iranian forces and degrade their ability to attack innocent civilians and commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz."