What is Pickaxe Mountain? Trump says US will hit Iranian nuclear site 'pretty soon'
Pickaxe Mountain, under construction, has been spared in past attacks.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday the U.S. would target Pickaxe Mountain, an Iranian nuclear site that is under construction and buried deep below the ground, as the war escalates amid 10 straight days of strikes.
"We'll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, repeating a threat he's made against the site in recent weeks.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Israeli intelligence assessed Iran transferred centrifuges, which could be used to enrich uranium, the essential process in building a nuclear weapon, to Pickaxe Mountain last fall.
The facility has been under construction for years and is only miles away from Natanz, one of three nuclear site targeted by U.S. and Israeli airstrikes in a June 2025 operation.
Trump did not deny the Wall Street Journal report when asked by a reporter. The president said Iran "may have" moved the centrifuges there, but "we don't have it on record."
"Maybe this one they have right," Trump said about the newspaper. "But it's okay. It doesn't mean anything unless they have the material."
"We follow the material," Trump said, referring to the uranium itself.
Iran is believed to possess close to 1,000 pounds of highly-enriched uranium, which is near weapons-grade and which Trump has said the U.S. would secure in order to ensure the military campaign was successful in inhibiting Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon.
Separate from the discussion around Pickaxe, Trump said there was evidence Iran was looking to rebuild its nuclear program, which was severely damaged in U.S. strikes last summer but apparently spared so far in the war in Iran, which began in February.
"They're trying to possibly reconstitute a site," Trump said Tuesday. "We'll hit that site. Any site where they're even thinking about nuclear, we'll be hitting it very, very powerfully."
Reporting from the Wall Street Journal said it was unclear whether the transfer of centrifuges to Pickaxe represented an effort to build an enrichment site or was merely done to protect the equipment from destruction.
What is Pickaxe Mountain?
Known as Kūh-e Kolang or "Mount Kolang" in Iran, the complex includes a series of tunnels and facilities built into the mountain. It was declared in 2021 by Iran to be a centrifuge assembly site after a similar plant in neighboring Natanz was destroyed.
Analysts at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), who reviewed recent satellite imagery, say that construction is still underway at the site. They add that it is buried 100 meters under the ground, and that it's unclear when it could be operational.
Kelsey Davenport, the director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association, told ABC News that "the location of the site does pose concern."
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, have been barred from entering Iran since the U.S. attacked the country earlier this year, leaving profound question marks about Iran's nuclear capabilities.
Analysts say it's unlikely the U.S. would have spared Pickaxe in the past if it believed it posed a threat.
"I would say it's notable that the U.S. and Israel did not even attempt to target the facility in June 2025, or again after attacking Iran this year," Davenport said. "Given the intensity of the U.S. and Israeli intelligence penetration of Iran's nuclear program, I think that suggests that the U.S. does not view Pickaxe as an imminent threat."
Yet, the presence of centrifuges or other nuclear technologies could motivate a U.S. attack, experts said. Some analysts said a U.S. attack could emulate its strikes against Isfahan in 2025, since the depth of Pickaxe would make direct targeting difficult -- even with the military's most powerful bomb, a massive ordnance penetrator, or MOP.
The U.S. could conceivably use the MOPs to target Pickaxe, but there would be "no guarantee that the site would be destroyed," Davenport said.
ISIS assesses that "the site, in its present condition, would be more suitable for ground forces to attack or sabotage."
Still, the bombs could exploit vulnerabilities at Pickaxe. Collapsing the entrances could complicate construction efforts which are underway there, and an attempt to dig out the entrances would be visible via satellites, experts said, providing a kind of "early warning system" for efforts to rebuild.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, asked whether the U.S. could destroy whatever is below Pickaxe during a hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, said that "if anybody in the world can reach anything on ... God's green earth, it's the United States military, the most powerful military in the world."
Uncertainty about centrifuges
Little is known about the whereabouts or status of Iranian centrifuges.
Iran has not complied with its obligations under international law to allow the IAEA to access centrifuge manufacturing sites since 2020. Before the war, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the U.S. assessed that Iran was "not enriching" its nuclear material, a process involving centrifuges, at the time.
Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director-general for safeguards at the IAEA, said Iran has developed a more sophisticated program with "more independence using their own industry" in the years since the international community began negotiating with Iran over its nuclear capabilities.
According to Heinonen, as many as 20 facilities across Iran produced centrifuges, potentially leaving the machines dispersed around the country.
"There is a real question mark about what types of centrifuges survived [and] how many survived" the U.S. strikes last summer, Davenport said.
"And that has a direct relevance to how quickly Iran could reconstitute its program," she said. "In my opinion, these uncertainties underscore the critical necessity of the IAEA returning to Iran to resume inspections."
Heinonen said components manufactured around the country is "the big question," because it's unlikely that the U.S. destroyed all 20 sites in its 2026 bombing campaign.
"If they have all the components, you can assemble centrifuges somewhere else," he said.
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