Israel Tells US That Iran Moved Thousands of Centrifuges Into Pickaxe Mountain Before Latest Strikes

Since American strikes on Iran entered their 10th consecutive night, a new detail has emerged about what Tehran did in the year between the June 2025 war and the current bombing campaign: it moved its enrichment equipment underground, into a mountain the US has now threatened to hit directly.

An Israeli intelligence assessment, cited by the Wall Street Journal and reported Monday by Israel National News, found that Iran relocated thousands of uranium enrichment centrifuges into a deep underground facility inside Pickaxe Mountain last autumn. The transfer reportedly happened after Israeli and US strikes hit Iran's three primary nuclear sites in June 2025, including Natanz, which sits about a mile from Pickaxe Mountain.

The findings were shared with the United States, according to the Journal's sourcing. An Israeli military official familiar with last year's strike operations told the paper that the June 2025 campaign didn't sufficiently target facilities tied to actual nuclear weapons development, and that there's still work to do, specifically at Pickaxe Mountain.

That assessment lines up with what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly been pushing President Trump to do: resume large-scale strikes to disrupt Iran's nuclear program and whatever reconstruction it's attempted since last year's bombing.

What Pickaxe Mountain actually is

Construction at Pickaxe Mountain began in 2020. Iran has always described it as a centrifuge assembly plant, nothing more. International inspectors have never been allowed inside, according to Al-Monitor, which is exactly why outside analysts don't trust that explanation.

The site is carved deep into the Zagros Mountains, buried under hundreds of meters of solid granite specifically to survive bunker-busting munitions, according to satellite analysis cited by Al Jazeera. The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security reported on July 2 that satellite images from late June showed vehicle activity consistent with ongoing construction and hardening of the tunnel entrances, directly contradicting Trump's public claim that "there's no activity there."

Trump told Hugh Hewitt the US has "a lot of eyes" on the site and sees no activity. The Institute for Science and International Security, a nonpartisan nonproliferation research group, says satellite imagery shows the opposite. Both claims are on the record. Only one can be true, and neither side has released the underlying imagery for independent verification.

Trump's public threats

Trump has been blunt about the target in recent interviews. "Pickaxe is a possible target for a nice, big, fat shot right in the front door," he told Hewitt, adding, "We're going to take out Pickaxe Mountain. Tell the Iranians to be ready. Let them know we're coming, okay? There's not a damn thing they can do about it."

He also dismissed the value of the preliminary 60-day nuclear talks framework that had been in place with Iran, calling it a "test" that "didn't mean much." Negotiators for both countries had been expected to use that window to discuss IAEA inspector access to sites including Pickaxe Mountain. Since the June 2025 strikes, Iran has restricted IAEA visits to non-sensitive sites like the Tehran Research Reactor and the Bushehr commercial plant, according to Al-Monitor.

The unresolved military question

Experts told Al-Monitor it's unclear whether US airstrikes alone, even with the largest bunker-buster munitions in the American arsenal, can physically destroy a facility buried that deep in granite. It's a straightforward engineering problem: geology limits what conventional ordnance can do, no matter how "big" or "fat" the shot is.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and the IAEA did not respond to requests for comment cited in the Journal's reporting. The White House, for its part, pointed reporters back to Trump's own interviews rather than issuing new comment.

Al Jazeera's coverage frames Pickaxe Mountain largely through the lens of Iranian grievance, noting Tehran has blamed Washington for the "return of insecurity" to the region and that the Revolutionary Guard Corps has accused the US of endangering global oil supplies through the strikes. That's a fair inclusion of Iran's public position. Tehran has not addressed, on the record, the specific Israeli intelligence claim that centrifuges were physically moved into the mountain last autumn. Silence on that specific allegation is significant.

What happens next depends on two things nobody outside classified channels can confirm: whether US Central Command, which has already run ten straight nights of strikes "at the commander in chief's direction," actually orders an attack on Pickaxe Mountain itself, and whether such a strike could reach equipment buried that deep to begin with. Until either happens, the site remains a threat on paper and a genuine gap in what the public knows for certain.