On Friday, Trump sought to downplay the war in Iran, calling it “small potatoes”, while a day earlier, at a White House news briefing, Vice President JD Vance appeared to suggest the conflict had cooled and to shrug off an alleged US strike on a wedding in southern Iran with “sometimes things happen“.

At a White House briefing this week, Vance said of the conflict with Iran that he “wouldn’t call it a war” and claimed there was “no active shooting right now”.

But the US and Iran have exchanged attacks this week, including a US hit close to Iran’s oil infrastructure on Kharg Island.

Meanwhile, talks related to Iran’s nuclear programme have remained in limbo since a 60-day negotiating window expired in mid-August without a deal.

Iran says it is not undertaking any work at the Natanz nuclear site.

Its Khatam al-Anbiya central military headquarters has warned that bombing the nearby mountain would amount to a renewal of war across the region, at a time when the Trump administration would prefer to keep the war contained before pivotal mid-term elections.

So why has Pickaxe Mountain become the latest focus of Trump’s threats – again?

What is Pickaxe Mountain?

Known in Iran as Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, the site sits roughly 220km (140 miles) south of the capital Tehran, in Isfahan province, and just 2km (1.2 miles) from the Natanz enrichment plant.

US intelligence reports indicate that the facility has been excavated deep inside the mountain, beneath hundreds of metres of solid granite rock, to protect it from powerful bombs designed to penetrate bunkers.

The main chambers are thought to lie at least 100 metres (330ft) underground.

Some Western analysts have speculated that the mountain was intended to house an undeclared enrichment plant, a hedge against attacks on Iran’s known facilities.

The Institute for Science and International Security, which tracks the site by satellite, has assessed that it is still under construction and not yet operational.

However, Iran has always maintained that it is developing a nuclear power programme only, and does not have plans to build a nuclear weapon.

Why does Pickaxe Mountain matter?

Because it is intact.

Pickaxe Mountain was left alone during the US’s June 2025 strikes on Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan at the end of the 12-day Israel war on Iran, and has escaped the current war almost entirely; the Institute for Science and International Security has recorded only the destruction of a vehicle on a nearby spoil pile.

With Iran’s centrifuge manufacturing base and enrichment halls at other sites damaged in the war, analysts see the tunnels as the most obvious place for Tehran to rebuild: For component production, assembly or enrichment of uranium.

The Wall Street Journal reported in July that Israel had passed Washington intelligence suggesting thousands of centrifuges had been moved inside the facility late last year, a claim the US has not confirmed.

Trump has been less alarmist than Israel.

Centrifuges only matter if there is uranium to put through them; the machines concentrate uranium gas, and without a supply of it they cannot produce anythin

How much damage has been done to Iran’s nuclear sites?

According to most estimates, a considerable amount.

The European Council on Foreign Relations estimates that the 2025 strikes likely destroyed many of the roughly 18,000 centrifuges then operating at Iran’s Natanz and Fordow facilities, along with several centrifuge production sites and Ardakan, Iran’s only yellowcake milling plant. Yellowcake is powdered uranium concentrate obtained from milled uranium ore.

Nearly 4,000 additional centrifuges were installed but idle at the time; however, they may have survived the strikes.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed further damage to the entrance buildings of Natanz’s underground enrichment plant in March 2026, although it detected no additional impact on the plant itself.

The Institute for Science and International Security reported in June that tunnel entrances at all three main sites remain sealed, that there is no evidence of any enrichment taking place, and that the centrifuge programme still appears to have been destroyed.

Didn’t Trump say Iran’s nuclear sites had already been destroyed?

Yes. After the June 2025 attacks, Trump said the three sites had been “completely and totally obliterated”.

However, just days later, a leaked preliminary US Defence Intelligence Agency assessment concluded that the sites had been significantly damaged but not destroyed, estimating that the strikes had set Iran’s nuclear programme back by less than six months.

The situation today remains unclear.

“No one really knows what the state of Iran’s nuclear programme is at this moment; there’s a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity about how much damage Iran has suffered as a result of these last two wars,” Nader Hashemi, a professor of Middle East politics at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera.

Iran is currently believed to be holding about 440kg (970lb) of uranium enriched to 60 percent.

But having the material is only part of the equation, Hashemi said.

In order for Iran to produce a nuclear weapon, it would have to enrich that uranium up to 90 percent.

That would require access to its centrifuges, “of which we don’t know to what extent they may have been damaged”, he said.

No inspector has entered the bombed sites, and Trump’s framing has shifted from “obliteration” to a promise to hit any site where Iran is “even thinking about nuclear”.
What do we know about Iran’s nuclear programme?

Less than at any point in two decades.

Just before the US-Israel attacks on Iran in June 2025, the IAEA verified about 10 tonnes of enriched uranium in total, including the 440kg stockpile enriched to 60 percent.

In theory, this amount of enriched uranium – should it be enriched to 90 percent – is enough to produce more than 10 nuclear warheads, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi told Al Jazeera in early March. It is unclear where this stock may be, however.

Iran suspended cooperation with the agency after the strikes, and the IAEA now says it has no way to report on the size, location or composition of that stockpile, though it believes much of the 60-percent material is bottled up in tunnels at Isfahan.

On Friday, Trump claimed again that the US had prevented Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, arguing that Washington’s intervention had protected Israel and the wider Middle East.

Tehran insists the programme is peaceful, and has dismissed Washington’s focus on Pickaxe Mountain as a manufactured pretext for attacking it.

>>1534363
It's hilarious how this admin is so adverse to admitting any kind of failure that they still maintain they set Iran's program back decades last year even though right now they're constantly saying "We have to bomb them to shit or they'll have a nuke soon".

>>1534371
I'm pretty sure ESL shill established that the Trump administration just accelerated Iran getting nukes.

According to them, Obama's nuclear deal fully sunset in 2030, which would have put Iran into the same position Trump did when he ripped up the agreement in 2018.
Then it took until 2026 for Iran to be two weeks away from creating a nuke.
Trump's actions directly led Iran being able to create a nuclear device 4-12 years faster.

>>1534377
When you blow up their nuclear facilities like Trump, you accelerate their nuclear program.
When you give them permission to enrich uranium and operate centrifuges like Obama, you slow down their nuclear program.
Justin Trudeau is that you?

>>1534378
>When you back out of the deal and allow them to enrich uranium, you accelerate their nuclear program
FTFY anon.

>>1534371
Or, maybe, developing a nuclear weapon is a complicated thing and you're an idiot.

We below up Fordow Fuel Enrichment plant - thats a big setback
We blew up Natanz nuclear complex - thats a big setback
We blew up Isafahan nuclear complex - thats a big setback

Pickaxe Mountain is a newer facility, which was not operational until very recently.

>>1534377
Sure, if you want to be extremely disingenuous about how these things work.

>>1534386
>allow Iran to enrich nuclear material and trade to raise capital to build their conventional forces
>then, after 2030 they will have tons of nuclear material that they can enrich to weapons grade in <6 months and a much, much better military than they have now.
break the deal
>they have less nuclear material, and even less which they can enrich to weapons grade
>their military is shit and easy to destroy.
Rubio spoke of this.

>>1534386
https://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/visualizing-centrifuge-limits-under-iran-deal/
Allowing 5,060 active IR-1 centrifuges to enrich uranium increases the amount of enriched uranium Iran has access to
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/07/738902822/irans-uranium-enrichment-breaks-nuclear-deal-limit-here-s-what-that-means
Breaking the limits and further enriching uranium accelerates their nuclear program

>>1534387
>Pickaxe Mountain is a newer facility, which was not operational until very recently.
wow really funny how we apparently keep setting them back and then whoops, actually they have another facility and we need need need to bomb it really soon or whoopsie they have a nuke.

>>then, after 2030 they will have tons of nuclear material that they can enrich to weapons grade in <6 months and a much, much better military than they have now.
This is basically suggesting we couldn't have just extended the deal. Or that somehow they would've outpaced us in 10 years despite the US military being, you know, the US military.

Under your mindset we will now be at war with Iran forever, because they'll keep rebuilding nuclear facilities and we'll have to keep bombing them. Except now they control the strait, so they'll just close the strait and cause a fuel crisis until we fuck off.

>>1534395
>wow really funny how we apparently keep setting them back and then whoops, actually they have another facility and we need need need to bomb it really soon or whoopsie they have a nuke.
In war, your enemy gets to do things too.

>This is basically suggesting we couldn't have just extended the deal
Why would they extend the deal?
>Or that somehow they would've outpaced us in 10 years
They dont need to outpace us. Their doctrine is to hurt neighboring countries. An extra ten years and hundreds of billions of dollars funds a lot of missiles. We only just won the missile war.

>Except now they control the strait
They dont.
>so they'll just close the strait and cause a fuel crisis until we fuck off.
Weird how the strait has been "closed", according you fags, for the better part of a year and there is no fuel crisis.

>>1534399
>Why would they extend the deal?
For the same reasons they agreed to the deal; it's actually very nice to not be bothered by US sanctions and asset seizures in exchange for limiting your nuclear aspirations to just reactors and power. Of course now we killed the leadership that was willing to negotiate and showed them they can in fact seize and close off the strait of hormuz, so they wouldn't agree to it again.

>They dont.
Is the Strait open yes or no?

>Weird how the strait has been "closed", according you fags, for the better part of a year and there is no fuel crisis.
Have you been to a gas station since the war started retard?

>>1534404
>For the same reasons they agreed to the deal; it's actually very nice to not be bothered by US sanctions and asset seizures in exchange for limiting your nuclear aspirations to just reactors and power
>Of course now we killed the leadership that was willing to negotiate
Trump offered them the same deal earlier this year. They refused.

>Is the Strait open yes or no?
Yes.
>Have you been to a gas station since the war started retard?
Yes.

>>1534405
>Trump offered them the same deal earlier this year. They refused.
Yeah no shit. As I said, we killed the people who agreed last time, the more extreme elements took over, and not only do they not want to cooperate, they have no reason to seeing as we killed the previous leadership mid-negotiations. Add in how they can use the Strait for leverage now, yeah no wonder we aren't getting the deal we ripped up.

>Yes
*BUZZ* Annnnd that's wrong! Thanks for playing anon but unless you consider 10% of normal traffic to be open, the Strait is not open. And if you do, you're delusional.

>>1534408
>As I said, we killed the people who agreed last time
Those same people refused a deal before the current war.

>Thanks for playing anon but unless you consider 10% of normal traffic to be open, the Strait is not open.
The strait is open. Ships are free to traffic it if they wish. They wont get insurance, and so many don't, but its open and the USN is operating freely in it.

>>1534410
>The strait is open. Ships are free to traffic it if they wish. They wont get insurance, and so many don't, but its open and the USN is operating freely in it.
Ok then why is traffic a mere 10% of normal? What changed between then and now?

>>1534395
>>>then, after 2030 they will have tons of nuclear material that they can enrich to weapons grade in <6 months and a much, much better military than they have now.
>This is basically suggesting we couldn't have just extended the deal.
Its not just suggesting, its confirming we could have extended the deal. It was the first steps in deescalating conflict and bringing Iran back into the global economy.

ESL shill is just desperately trying to pretend that Trump didn't fuck up this deal. Even in their cope pretending that Iran would have a Nuke in 2030 + 6 months, after Trump ripped up the deal Iran was two weeks away from having a nuke now.

Trump fucked everything up and helped Iran build up nuclear materials faster. Obama's plan was objectively better and kept them from building up longer. These are objective facts now.

>>1534414
>Ok then why is traffic a mere 10% of normal? What changed between then and now?
Iran shoots at merchant ships. Insurance carriers wont insure ships who go through the strait. Without insurance you cant enter ports to unload your cargo.

Straight is open, just too risky for insurance carriers.

>>1534431
>Straight is open, just too risky for insurance carriers.
>It's totally open it's just to risky to go through
Yeah in the same way Area 51 is open but no one goes in because there's too much risk of being caught by the feds.