Washington DC , USA, September 5: US President Donald Trump said the United States may strike Iran’s underground nuclear facility known as Pickaxe Mountain “very soon” if American intelligence detects activity at the site.
Speaking to reporters at the Oval Office on Friday, Trump said the US military campaign against Iran was aimed at preventing Tehran from acquiring 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,” Trump said.
Trump said American intelligence was monitoring activity at Pickaxe Mountain and other locations across Iran.“We may hit Pickaxe very soon because if there was anything going on with Pickaxe,” he said. “If anything goes bad, we hit them; we hit them hard.”
Pickaxe Mountain is located near Iran’s Natanz uranium-enrichment facility. The site is described as an underground complex with two tunnel systems. The Wall Street Journal had earlier reported that Israeli intelligence believes Iran has relocated thousands of centrifuges to the facility.
The possible targeting of Pickaxe Mountain would mark a further escalation in the US campaign against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
Trump also said American military action had prevented a wider regional conflict, claiming that without US intervention, Israel and other countries in the Middle East would have faced a greater threat.
The remarks came days after the US Central Command said American forces had completed strikes against Iranian military targets. CENTCOM said the operations targeted facilities associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, including air-defence installations, radar systems, maritime assets, mine-laying capabilities and communications sites.
According to CENTCOM, the strikes followed what it described as attempted attacks by the IRGC against commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and US service members.
Trump also spoke about recent US strikes on Iranian radar systems, claiming that American forces had destroyed radar installations on two occasions.“There had been no shooting for days before the hit that we gave them the other night to wipe out the radar they had,” he said.
Iran has condemned the latest US strikes, accusing Washington of violating its sovereignty and targeting non-military infrastructure and civilian sites across several provinces.
Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Iranian armed forces had responded with what it described as “crushing defensive strikes” against US military bases in West Asia, which Tehran said were used as launch and support points for American attacks.