Pickaxe Mountain

Donald Trump has threatened to strike Pickaxe Mountain, warning the United States would be "hitting that area very probably pretty soon, very heavily", though no CENTCOM release, deployment order or force-posture change names the site. Iranian state media said any strike on nuclear facilities would be treated as an expansion of the war, and a senior Tehran security source told CNN that claims Iran moved centrifuges and enriched uranium there are false.

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.

Neither account can be independently verified. The IAEA has had no access to Iran's nuclear sites for months, leaving Tehran's denial and the Israeli assessment both unconfirmed from the ground. That uncertainty makes the site a live flashpoint: a US strike there would risk hitting nuclear material whose location no independent inspector can confirm.