Trump Says U.S. Will Strike Iran's Pickaxe Mountain Site 'Pretty Soon' as War Enters 11th Night of Strikes

Trump Signals Next Target as Regional Strikes Multiply

Since U.S. and Iranian forces resumed fighting two weeks ago, the war has escalated well beyond the original exchange of strikes, with Iran now hitting three additional countries and President Trump naming the regime's next likely target.

Trump told reporters Tuesday at the White House that U.S. forces will strike Iran's Pickaxe Mountain site, an underground facility near the Natanz nuclear complex, in the near future. "We'll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily," Trump said, according to Breitbart and the Denver Gazette, both of which carried extended quotes from his remarks during a meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun.

The comments followed a Wall Street Journal report cited by Breitbart that Israeli intelligence believes Iran moved thousands of advanced centrifuges into Pickaxe Mountain last fall. Trump did not confirm the report outright but did not dismiss it either. "I think that they may have," he said, adding that centrifuges alone don't matter without fissile material. "It doesn't mean anything unless they have the material. They don't have it. We follow the material. That's where the action is."

Trump Breaks From Typical Operational Secrecy

Trump acknowledged he was doing something unusual by naming a target in advance. "Normally, I wouldn't say that," he said. "If I thought they could do something about it, I would never say that. But we'll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily."

He extended the warning to any future Iranian reconstruction effort. "Any site where they're even thinking about nuclear, we'll be hitting it very, very powerfully," Trump said.

On the broader campaign, Trump argued the damage already done to Iran's military and nuclear infrastructure would take Tehran decades to reverse. "If we left right now, it would take Iran 20 to 25 years to rebuild," he said. "We're not finished at all, we're not leaving right now."

11th Consecutive Night of Strikes, Regional Spillover

The U.S. military confirmed an 11th consecutive night of strikes against Iranian targets, according to the New Indian Express, which cited Central Command's stated goal of degrading Iran's ability to threaten commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Breitbart similarly reported that Central Command strikes have hit missile and drone capabilities, military command centers, maritime assets, and air defense systems.

The war has widened geographically. Iran's Khatam Al-Anbiya military command threatened that any U.S. strike on Pickaxe Mountain would be treated as "an expansion of war in the region" and vowed retaliation against "all the interests of America, the allies and supporters," according to Iran's state broadcaster IRIB, as reported by the New Indian Express.

Bahrain said it intercepted Iranian attacks amid repeated air raid sirens. Kuwait's army said its air defenses engaged Iranian drone attacks Wednesday morning. Iran's Revolutionary Guards confirmed a strike on Jordan, saying they targeted a "complex housing US terrorist forces" near Rukban, while Iran's army said it separately targeted U.S. assets in Kuwait and Bahrain, including radar installations and administrative buildings. The Guards warned of "even more decisive and powerful waves of drone and missile attacks," according to state news agency IRNA.

Houthi Threat and the Diplomacy Question

Trump also addressed the risk that Iran's Houthi allies in Yemen could open a new front by blockading Red Sea shipping lanes. "If something like that happens, we take care of it," he said, according to the Denver Gazette. "We've done that with the Houthis before, and we haven't heard from them in a while since we did what we did originally."

On the question of renewed negotiations, Trump was dismissive, framing any Iranian interest in talks as a byproduct of military pressure rather than genuine willingness to compromise. "They want to desperately meet because they're getting decimated," he said. "Until they're ready to meet in a meaningful way, we have no interest."

Critics of the campaign would note that escalating strikes on a fortified underground nuclear site, especially one whose precise contents remain a matter of intelligence assessment rather than confirmed fact, carries real risk of drawing in Jordan, Bahrain, and Kuwait more deeply and of Iran responding with the kind of "decisive and powerful" attacks its Revolutionary Guards have promised. Trump's own framing, that Iran "doesn't have" the fissile material to make the centrifuges dangerous yet, is itself an argument some would use for restraint rather than a strike.

No timeline more specific than "pretty soon" has been given for the Pickaxe Mountain operation, and neither the Pentagon nor Central Command has confirmed a strike has occurred as of Wednesday. Whether Iran's regional allies, particularly the Houthis, open a genuinely new front in the Red Sea remains the most immediate open question hanging over the next phase of the war.