US President Trump announced Monday that the US military will target a heavily fortified underground Iranian military site known as Pickaxe Mountain, delivering an explicit warning to Tehran that Washington is prepared to escalate its campaign of retaliatory airstrikes.
“We’re going to take out Pickaxe Mountain. Tell the Iranians to be ready,” US President Trump said during a live interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show. The declaration marks a significant escalation in rhetoric following days of direct missile and drone exchanges between American forces and Iranian military assets in the region, signalling that the White House is prepared to strike deep inside sovereign Iranian territory to degrade its strategic capabilities.
The targeted site, situated near the historically contested Natanz uranium enrichment facility, has long been a focal point for Western intelligence agencies. According to defence analysts and satellite imagery assessments, Pickaxe Mountain houses a subterranean network of tunnels constructed deep within a mountain range, specifically engineered to shield advanced nuclear research and military assets from conventional aerial bombardment.
US President Trump indicated that American surveillance assets have been maintaining an uninterrupted watch over the perimeter, declaring that the US is watching the site closely.
Subterranean Tunnels and the Limits of Conventional Power
The strategic significance of the facility complicates any potential deployment of American airpower. Defence intelligence reports indicate the mountain base features two deeply buried tunnel complexes that weapons experts previously assessed as virtually impenetrable by even the most powerful conventional bunker-buster munitions currently available in the US conventional arsenal. Despite these architectural defences, US President Trump expressed absolute confidence in the military’s capacity to neutralise the facility, suggesting an imminent shift in operational strategy.
“They’re not doing well with their nuclear situation. Every time we hear about it, we blow it up,” US President Trump stated during the interview, pointing toward previous undisclosed or intelligence-led disruptions to Iran’s atomic infrastructure. “So they don’t like talking about it. But we’ll probably give Pickaxe a shot relatively soon.“
The provocative rhetoric coincides with a major expansion of American naval enforcement in the Middle East. Earlier on Monday, the White House confirmed that the US was reinstating a strict maritime blockade of Iranian shipping throughout the Gulf. US President Trump explicitly noted that the US military would guarantee that the vital global energy transit route of the Strait of Hormuz remains open to commercial traffic, though he added a caveat that foreign vessels utilising the protected shipping lanes would be expected to comply under a financial framework, noting security would be maintained “for a fee.“
Escalating Retaliation and Regional Blockades
The re-established naval blockade and the threat against Pickaxe Mountain follow a volatile sequence of direct hostilities between US forces and Iranian units. The Pentagon has reported multiple waves of intercept operations involving incoming drones and ballistic missiles launched by Iranian forces and their regional proxies targeting US installations, triggering a series of calibrated counter-strikes across the theatre.
“We’re going to hit them very hard tonight, and we’re going to hit them hard tomorrow. And there’s not a damn thing they can do about it,” US President Trump said, underlining the administration’s current posture of overwhelming deterrence.
Spokespersons for the Pentagon and the US Central Command declined to comment on the specific tactical options under consideration for an operation against Pickaxe Mountain or whether specialised ordnance would be deployed. Regional diplomatic sources warned that a direct kinetic strike on a facility buried inside Iran’s mainland would represent a major break from the localised grey-zone warfare that has characterised the conflict, potentially forcing a broader regional response from Tehran.
