President Donald Trump continues to insist that the United States will attack Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, drawing attention to what Israel believes is an underground nuclear facility where Iran stores part of its enriched uranium stockpile and state-of-the-art enrichment centrifuges.
“We’ll probably get to that area soon, and there’s nothing they can do,” Trump said Tuesday.
In response, the Iranian government warned that any U.S. attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would be treated as an escalation of war in the region, state media reported early Wednesday.
Here’s what we know about Pickaxe Mountain.
Pickaxe Mountain is a heavily fortified facility located deep underground in the country’s center, about a mile south of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility that was previously bombed by the United States and Israel, making it a difficult target for the United States and Israel and for potential ground operations.
According to the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), the facility is buried at least 100 meters (328 feet) underground in a large mountain called Que Qoran Gaz La (Qoran means pickaxe).
Construction of the facility began in 2020. At the time, Iran declared the facility to the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency as a future facility to assemble centrifuges to produce nuclear fuel.
This facility is mostly shrouded in mystery. There are no schematic diagrams available to the public, and experts glean insights primarily from analyzing satellite images. ISIS said in a recent report that these images show the facility to have multiple tunnel complexes, an extensive security perimeter, and entrances hardened with concrete to protect it from possible air strikes.
The facility is not yet operational and is believed to be under construction. These efforts may have intensified in the past year, with construction increasing after Israel and the United States targeted other Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025. Among the facilities attacked was a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, just a few miles from Mount Pickaxe.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, there are several possible reasons for the increase in activity on the Pickaxe site. Iran may be manufacturing centrifuges, as it has told the United Nations. It is possible that it is expanding its mission by taking over activities from other destroyed facilities. Alternatively, it could create secret facilities to enrich uranium, a key element in producing nuclear weapons.
Israeli intelligence believes Iran moved some of its enriched uranium stockpile and state-of-the-art enrichment centrifuges to Pickaxe Mountain after last June’s attack, an Israeli official familiar with the matter told CNN.
During that 12-day war, Israel attacked three important Iranian nuclear facilities, Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow, killing many top scientists involved in nuclear research and development. The United States entered the conflict near the end of the war, attacking the same three facilities with even more powerful bombs, and President Trump claimed that Iran’s nuclear capabilities had been “destroyed.” However, neither the United States nor Israel attacked Pickaxe Mountain.
U.S. and U.N. intelligence agencies have since suggested that parts of Iran’s nuclear program remain intact, although damaged. And since then, it has become a common goal for both the United States and Israel to force Iran to dispose of its roughly 1,000-pound highly enriched uranium stockpile, or to take it from Iran.
CNN previously reported that Iran has dramatically escalated its efforts to seal off a near-bomb-grade uranium cache, deliberately collapsing tunnels and rigging entrances with explosive mines.
Asked Tuesday whether Iran had moved advanced centrifuges to Pickaxe Mountain, President Trump appeared to downplay the Israeli report, saying, “It’s not on the record.”
In early July, a senior security official in Tehran told CNN that claims of nuclear activity at Mount Pickaxe were false.
Iran maintains that its nuclear program is for peaceful energy purposes only, and plans to build additional nuclear power plants to meet domestic energy needs and reserve more oil for export.
Is there a possibility of an attack from the US or Israel?
Analysts have mixed opinions.
Andrea Stricker, a nonproliferation expert, told CNN that President Trump should take action to disable Pickaxe to prevent Iran from “rebuilding its enrichment and nuclear weapons options and accessing thousands of centrifuges that are left over from its nuclear program.”
Ground operations are complex, but ISIS reports point to several possible avenues of attack.
The secret facility requires ventilation, heating, cooling, distribution, power and personnel, all of which have “vulnerabilities that the United States and Israel believe could be exploited,” the paper said.
However, the core of the facility is likely to be deeply buried, so a strike may not have the desired impact.
James Acton, who co-leads the Carnegie Endowment’s nuclear policy work, wrote in a post on X that the United States could do more than collapse the access tunnel at the Pickaxe Mountain facility. “It’s not a game changer,” Acton said.
