The site is likely designed to shelter centrifuges or enrichment work beyond the reach of current U.S. bunker-busters.
Trump has threatened to strike it ("we may hit Pickaxe very soon"), but the Pentagon's biggest non-nuclear bomb may not penetrate deep enough.
Signs suggest the U.S. is already working on the problem: a day before the war started, a Pentagon WMD agency signed an emergency contract to repair an underground test facility carved into granite at White Sands — connected to simulating strikes on Iran's deepest bunkers.
A "next-generation penetrator" bomb is in prototype development.
CSIS analysts say Pickaxe isn't yet operational, but construction is shifting from excavation to internal buildout and hardening.
Source: CNN
Iran is rapidly building out a suspected nuclear facility buried deep inside a granite mountain near Natanz — dubbed "Pickaxe Mountain" — with satellite imagery showing a construction surge in 2026.
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