US President Donald Trump on Friday said the United States may strike Iran’s heavily fortified underground nuclear-linked facility at Pickaxe Mountain “very soon”, warning that Washington was closely monitoring act…

US President Donald Trump on Friday said the United States may strike Iran’s heavily fortified underground nuclear-linked facility at Pickaxe Mountain “very soon”, warning that Washington was closely monitoring activity at the site.Speaking to reporters at the Oval Office, Trump said the US had detailed information about movements around the facility and would respond forcefully if it detected anything concerning. “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,” Trump said, according to Reuters.Pickaxe Mountain, located near Iran’s heavily damaged Natanz uranium-enrichment facility in Isfahan province, is a heavily fortified underground complex comprising two deeply buried tunnel systems.The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), which has analysed satellite imagery of the site, estimates that parts of the facility are at least 100 metres underground, with four tunnel entrances leading into the mountain. Construction began in 2020 after an explosion damaged Natanz’s above-ground advanced centrifuge assembly facility.The underground site was intended to replace the damaged facility and could play an important role in Iran’s efforts to rebuild its centrifuge programme. According to ISIS report, the earlier Natanz facility had been designed to assemble around 6,000 advanced centrifuges a year.Trump says if the Fed doesn’t cut rates, he’ll stop trading with some nationsThe site’s depth and hardened construction make it significantly more difficult to target with conventional airstrikes. The Wall Street Journal, citing US and Israeli officials, reported in July that Israeli intelligence indicated Iran had moved thousands of centrifuges to Pickaxe Mountain, although the equipment inside the facility has not been independently verified.Trump, meanwhile, defended the wider US military campaign against Iran, saying its principal objective was to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon. “We’re in five months now. And you know what we did in five months? They’re not going to have a nuclear weapon, that’s what we did,” he said.He also argued that US intervention had prevented a wider regional conflict, claiming Iran would have posed a greater threat to Israel and other countries if Washington had not acted. “If we didn’t go in there, you wouldn’t have Israel right now, you wouldn’t have the Middle East, and they probably would go at European cities and our cities next,” Trump said.Trump’s remarks came days after the US military said it had carried out another wave of strikes against Iranian military targets. US Central Command said the operations targeted facilities linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including air-defence installations, radar systems, maritime assets, mine-laying capabilities and communications sites.CENTCOM said the strikes followed what it described as recent attempted attacks by the IRGC against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and US service members.Trump also claimed US forces had destroyed Iranian radar systems twice, saying American strikes had reduced activity around the systems. “They had very sophisticated radar, they brought in radar because we knocked it out once, and now we knocked it out twice. Now we don’t notice any activity,” he said.“I think they’re tired of putting it in and getting blown up,” Trump added, referring to Iran’s apparent reluctance to deploy additional radar systems.Iran has strongly condemned the US strikes, accusing Washington of violating its sovereignty and targeting non-military infrastructure and civilian sites in several provinces. Tehran has also said its armed forces responded with what its Foreign Ministry described as “crushing defensive strikes” against US military bases in West Asia.Iran said those bases were being used as launching, support and staging points for American attacks, framing its military response as defensive action against the ongoing US campaign.With Trump now saying Pickaxe Mountain could be struck “very soon”, the facility could become the next major flashpoint in the confrontation. A strike would carry particular significance because the complex was built deep underground to protect sensitive nuclear-related infrastructure, and because its exact contents and operational status remain difficult to independently establish.(With Reuters Inputs)

Source: Deccan Herald