 "Inside Pickaxe Mountain, Iran’s new nuclear lair that could evade US bombs")
Iran is constructing a nuclear facility that is so deep that even the United States’ bunker buster bomb may not be able to destroy it. The new site comes to the spotlight after American B-2 stealth jets dropped 30,000lb bunker-busting bombs on Iran’s three key nuclear facilities — Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan — over the weekend.
While US President Donald Trump claims that the attack “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme, Tehran reportedly asserted that it shifted the key nuclear material before the American strikes. Experts believe Iran could have moved out some 400kg of enriched uranium before the US bombing.
They say Kūh-e Kolang Gaz Lā, or “Pickaxe Mountain”, may be the perfect place for Iran to hide its nuclear materials.
Let’s take a closer look.
Pickaxe mountain – Iran’s new nuclear lair
Iran is reportedly constructing deep into Pickaxe Mountain, which is just about 145 km south of Fordow and only a few minutes from the Natanz nuclear facility in central Isfahan province.
Tehran has secretly expanded and reinforced the site in the past four years, as per The Telegraph report.
In 2023, after analysing photos and videos from Planet Labs PBC, Associated Press (AP) reported that Iran was digging tunnels into the Kūh-e Kolang Gaz Lā.
Pickaxe, a peak in the mountains surrounding Natanz, is over 5,000 feet high. Iran has dug four entrances into the mountainside – two on the eastern side and two on the western side. Each tunnel entrance is six meters in width and eight meters tall, as per AP.
Fordow, considered the “crown jewels” of Iran's nuclear enrichment programme , has only two tunnel entrances.
Reports say that Iran’s facility beneath the Pickaxe Mountain could be built at a depth of 100 metres, compared with Fordow’s 60-90 metres depth.
This would reduce the effectiveness of the US’ bunker buster bomb, which was developed to target underground facilities. After Western intelligence exposed Iran’s secretly built Fordow nuclear facility in 2009, the US built the GBU-57 bomb, which can penetrate at least 60 meters (200 feet) of earth before detonating.
“So the depth of the facility is a concern because it would be much harder for us. It would be much harder to destroy using conventional weapons, such as like a typical bunker buster bomb,” Steven De La Fuente, a research associate at James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told AP in 2023.
Experts worry that, given the size of the project at Pickaxe Mountain, Iran could use the facility not just to build centrifuges but also to enrich uranium.
ALSO READ: Amid shaky truce, where is Iran’s enriched uranium enough to make 10 nuclear bombs?
Did Iran shift nuclear material to Pickaxe Mountain?
Despite Trump’s claim that American attacks “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities, evidence suggests otherwise.
A leaked initial classified assessment reportedly found that the US strike set Iran’s nuclear programme back by only months at most. The White House has slammed the “flat-out wrong” assessment leaked by “a low-level loser in the intelligence community”.
As per The Telegraph, 16 lorries were pictured outside Fordow before the US strikes on the weekend. An expert on Iran’s nuclear programme told the British daily that Iran had shifted much of its highly enriched uranium to a secret location before America’s attack.
Sima Shine, who has worked within the Israeli military establishment for 30 years, said Tehran had “hundreds if not thousands” of advanced centrifuges capable of producing weapons-grade uranium.
In April, Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said that when he asked Iran about what was happening underneath the Pickaxe mountain, he was told to mind his own business.
“Since it is obvious it is in a place where numerous and important activities related to the programme are taking place, we’re asking them, what is this for? They are telling us, it’s none of your business,” he said.
Grossi said it “cannot be excluded” that the tunnels would contain undeclared material.
Experts have raised an alarm that Iran is likely increasing its enriched uranium production at the Pickaxe facility.
This site could be more secure than the other facilities attacked by the US and Israel, The Sun reported, ciitng experts.
Ben Taleblu, of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Financial Times: “A key question is whether Iran will, or maybe already has, secreted fissile material into Pickaxe or some other unknown facility.”
According to the Institute for Science and International Security, Iran could “secretly deploy several thousand advanced centrifuges in the new tunnel complex” at Pickaxe mountain. This would allow Iran to continue its enrichment activities even if known facilities were destroyed.
With inputs from agencies
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