Iran on Wednesday denied there had been any nuclear-related activity at the so-called “Pickaxe Mountain,” one of the country’s most advanced uranium-enrichment facilities, less than a day after President Trump promised to strike the complex.
Esmaeil Baqaei, the spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, wrote in a statement that attacks on the Islamic regime’s “peaceful nuclear facilities” are a clear violation of international law and “reveal the United States’ deep-rooted enmity toward Iran’s scientific progress.”
He added that all of Iran’s nuclear activity has been recorded with the appropriate organizations.
“Washington’s obsessive focus on Kolang Kouh (Pickaxe Mountain) where no nuclear activity is taking place is nothing more than a fabricated pretext for aggression, destruction, and sabotage,” Mr. Baqaei wrote on X.
Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain is an advanced nuclear facility located near Natanz, one of the country’s most prominent enrichment sites. The site was supposedly built more than 300 feet underground and has never been assessed by international inspectors.
Following the June 2025 strikes on Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities, authorities reportedly accelerated construction of the site in anticipation of another war.
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Officially, Iran says the site is used to construct advanced centrifuges. But analysts and some U.S. officials have theorized that Iran has used the site to store its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium.
Washington is deeply invested in retrieving or otherwise disposing of Iran’s uranium stockpiles and sees the material as a tool Iran would use to build nuclear weapons.
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Mr. Trump told reporters Tuesday that the U.S. would be launching attacks on Pickaxe Mountain in the near future.
“We’ll be hitting that area very probably pretty soon,” Mr. Trump said. “There’s not a thing they can do about it. You know, normally I wouldn’t say that. 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.”
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