Iran Accuses US of Fabricating Claim of Nuclear Site on Pickaxe Mountain

JAKARTA - Iran has accused the US of using Pickaxe Mountain as an excuse to launch further attacks, after President Donald Trump threatened to attack the site, which is suspected of being an underground nuclear facility.

"Washington's obsessive focus on Pickaxe Mountain, where no nuclear activity takes place - nothing more than a fabricated pretext for aggression, destruction, and sabotage," said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei, via the X platform, quoted by CNN, Wednesday, July 22.

Pickaxe Mountain is a heavily fortified underground facility located in the center of the country, about a mile south of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility - which has previously been bombed by the US and Israel - making it a difficult target for any ground operation.

According to the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), the facility is buried at least 100 meters (328 feet) below a large mountain called Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La Iran.

On Tuesday, Trump said the US would attack Pickaxe Mountain in the near future, adding that there was nothing they (Iran) could do to prevent it."

In the same social media post, Baghaei questioned why the head of the UN nuclear watchdog had not responded to Trump's threat.

The reinforced underground facility was reported to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2020 as a future facility for centrifuge assembly that produces nuclear fuel.