Trump Says U.S. May Hit Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain “Very Soon”

President Donald Trump said Friday the United States may strike Iran’s underground complex known as Pickaxe Mountain “very soon” if activity is detected there. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office after this week’s renewed strikes and his comments on U.S. control of the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said American intelligence is watching the site near Natanz. “We may hit Pickaxe very soon because if there was anything going on with Pickaxe,” he said. “We know everybody that’s moving at Pickaxe; we know everybody that’s moving everywhere all over Iran. And if anything goes bad, we hit them; we hit them hard.” He credited U.S. space systems and Space Force for that monitoring. He again said the conflict is a “military conflict” rather than a war and called it “small potatoes for us.” No strike on Pickaxe was announced Friday.

Pickaxe Mountain, known in Iran as Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, sits in Isfahan province about a mile to two miles south of the Natanz uranium-enrichment complex, which U.S. and Israeli forces have already bombed. The Institute for Science and International Security has described two tunnel complexes under hundreds of feet of rock. Construction began after a 2020 blast damaged a centrifuge-assembly plant at Natanz. Iran told the IAEA years ago that it intended nuclear-related activity there; inspectors have not been given access. Satellite imagery has shown continued work on roads and tunnel entrances in 2026. The site was not hit in the June 2025 strikes on Natanz, Fordow, and other facilities or in later attacks on those plants. Analysts have said portions of the complex may sit deeper than the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator is reliably assessed to reach, though a strike on portals could seal access.

The Wall Street Journal reported in July that Israeli intelligence assessed Iran moved thousands of centrifuges into the mountain last fall after the 12-day 2025 war, and that Israel shared that assessment with Washington. Trump said at the time the transfer “may have” occurred but that the United States did not have it “on record,” and that centrifuges would not matter without nuclear material, which he said Iran does not have. He threatened the site in July on the Hugh Hewitt Show and again on July 21, saying the United States would hit the area “pretty soon, and very heavily.” Friday’s remarks named Pickaxe again and tied any strike to detected movement. Trump said the five-month campaign’s purpose was to keep Iran from a nuclear weapon. Allies have separately circulated a draft U.N. resolution over Iranian noncompliance. Tehran has treated attacks on nuclear sites as an expansion of the war. The administration has not published a target list or a timeline beyond the president’s “very soon” condition.