Pickaxe Mountain

Pickaxe Mountain, also known as Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, is a deep tunnel complex near Iran's Natanz enrichment site. Israeli intelligence, reported by the Wall Street Journal, assesses that Iran moved thousands of centrifuges and part of its roughly 440kg stock of 60%-enriched uranium there after the June 2025 strikes; a senior Tehran security source has called that relocation claim false.

On 22 July 2026 Donald Trump threatened to strike the site, warning the United States would be hitting the area very heavily, though no CENTCOM release, deployment order or force-posture change has named it as a target. Iranian state media has said any strike on nuclear facilities would count as an expansion of the war.

Neither account can be independently verified: the IAEA has had no access to Iran's main nuclear sites for nearly a year. That gap leaves Tehran's denial and the Israeli assessment both unconfirmed from the ground, making the site a live flashpoint where a US strike would risk hitting nuclear material whose location no independent inspector can confirm.