Will – and Can – Trump Target Pickaxe Mountain Next?

Will Donald Trump order strikes on Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain complex in this new kinetic phase of the war? He answered that question this week. The main question really is whether the US can effectively destroy any nuclear-related activities in this remote redoubt.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Israelis believe the Iranians shifted their nuclear-weapons development infrastructure to Pickaxe Mountain after the strikes on Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz last summer:

Israeli intelligence believes Iran moved thousands of uranium-enrichment centrifuges into tunnels deep inside a mountain last fall, Israeli and U.S. officials say, a development that would heighten concerns that Tehran could reconstitute its nuclear program. 

Israel passed along the intelligence findings to the U.S., saying the centrifuges were transferred to the Pickaxe Mountain site last fall after the 12-day war in June when American and Israeli strikes pummeled Iran’s three main nuclear sites. 

The Iranians built Fordow as an unassailable redoubt, and likely kept much of their most sensitive operations in that place. After Operation Midnight Hammer severely damaged all three locations and especially Fordow, the Israeli and US intel communities have seen increased activity at the site. That timing raises some questions about what may be at Pickaxe Mountain, and what may not be there:

Known as Mount Kolang in Iran, Pickaxe has been under surveillance by the U.S. and Israel for years, and what little is known about Iran’s activities at the site suggests it would present challenges to any airstrikes. Located near one of Iran’s main nuclear installations, Pickaxe was commissioned as an underground replacement for an Iranian centrifuge-assembly facility that was badly damaged after a 2020 explosion, which might have been an act of sabotage.

Activity has continued there steadily for the past 15 months, with truck traffic, tunnel reinforcements and a security perimeter springing up, said the Institute for Science and International Security, a think tank on nuclear and nonproliferation issues. There was also work around an older tunnel network that dates from 2007, which Iran has since sealed up.

Undoubtedly, the IRGC wants to find an untouchable facility for their (not so) secret work on nuclear weapons. However, if they waited until after Operation Midnight Hammer to move centrifuges and critical tasks, they may be prepping Pickaxe more as a place from which to start from square one. The Iranians did not get the chance to move material from Isfahan and Natanz before they provoked the Israelis into the Twelve Day War, and they wouldn’t have moved anything out of Fordow at all. The Iranian regime fully believed Fordow to be as impregnable as Pickaxe seems to be now, right up until Trump ordered a series of bunker-buster bombs dropped into its vents and demolished operations there. Afterward, the US has kept a very close eye on activity at all three sites, and Trump has himself shared the operating analysis that the Midnight Hammer bombing runs buried all of the material at those sites, including Iran’s highly enriched uranium.

The timeline suggests that the IRGC decided to create a second Fordow, as it were, rather than a replacement for it. That’s worrisome in itself, but they have had only six years to move what remained from the damaged centrifuges in the 2020 incident while operating their main development sites in parallel. The rapid increase in activity during the Twelve Day War and after Operation Midnight Hammer would likely be a reaction to losing the advanced operations entirely at the other locations, and an attempt to set up a new site where those could be rebuilt rather than just a relocation of those activities with full capacity. That’s still a bad development, although hardly unexpected from this regime. 

So can we take Pickaxe off the board too? Last week, Trump told Hugh Hewitt that it’s already made the target list:

Pickaxe is “a possible target for a nice big fat shot,” Trump told conservative broadcaster Hugh Hewitt on July 13. It was the first time he has explicitly talked about Pickaxe as a target, although he has previously mentioned an Iranian underground location buried in granite. …

Experts estimate that the subterranean complex reaches 300 to 450 feet deep beneath solid rock, with enough room to accommodate several nuclear-related facilities.

It will no doubt be difficult to destroy the underground facilities, but that was true of Fordow as well. If the Iranians have vents visible, Pickaxe will have the same vulnerabilities. If not, the entrances to the facility are certainly targetable. Also, even if the facility itself is somehow impregnable to aerial attack, its ground lines of communication are not. Sustained attacks on roads, energy production, and rail facilities to and around Pickaxe will eventually make the redoubt unusable except as shelter. Centrifuges do not spin themselves, after all. 

Given the circumstances, though, Trump may want to save his efforts for Kharg Island and other Iranian assets in the Strait of Hormuz. Ending their ability to receive oil income will shut down the Iranian economy that powers such weapons-development activities, and it’s a lot easier to get access to Abu Masa, Qeshm, Larak, and Iran’s other footprints in the Strait than it will be to pry open the secrets of Pickaxe. Perhaps a mission to seal the tunnels will be worth the risk, and then leave Pickaxe’s secrets to the successor regime after the IRGC collapses. 

Editor’s Note: For decades, former presidents have been all talk and no action. Now, Donald Trump is eliminating the threat from Iran once and for all. 

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