Taking out Iran’s deepest nuclear bunker could be the key to ending the war in Iran — but it could require putting commandos on the ground in the Islamic Republic.
The bunker, named by western intelligence sources “Pickaxe Mountain” is more than 330 feet under a mountain — deeper than the Fordow Uranian Enrichment Plant that the US hit last year.
President Trump has maintained that one of his top priorities of the war is to halt Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, with Tehran working to conceal and hide its more than 900 pounds of enriched uranium.
While the strikes have begun against Iran’s nuclear facilities, many experts say only troops the ground can completely wipe out Iran’s nuclear program.
The US and Israel conducted a series of airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities last summer during the 12-Day War, with Trump touting that Tehran’s nuclear program was fully destroyed.
The Islamic Republic, however, quickly moved to fortify the bases and resume its enrichment process, with Iran still in possession of more than 900 pounds of uranium enriched at 60%, only a short process away from being able to develop at least 11 nuclear bombs, according US officials.
The material is believed to be spread between Iran’s Fordow enrichment plant and its Isfahan nuclear complex.
That’s where Tehran is believed to be building a new enrichment plant, according to the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank.
Iran is also accused of creating a new, deeply fortified facility at Pickaxe Mountain, located about a mile from its Natanz enrichment plant.
Little is known about the nuclear facility, with Israeli outlets reporting that it could be about 330 feet below the mountain base, more than 30 feet deeper into the ground than the Fordow plant.
Rafael Grossi, the director general at the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, said he was told “it’s none of your business,” when inquiring about the work being done at the site last year.
Andrea Stricker, the nonproliferation program deputy director and research fellow at the FDD, said that the US and Israel cannot claim to fulfill their goals of the war without securing the Pickaxe Mountain site and the other nuclear facilities.
“Before the United States and Israel end major combat operations against Iran, they must complete two urgent tasks. First, they must neutralize Pickaxe Mountain,” Stricker wrote in a briefing.
“Second, they must recover or eliminate HEU (highly enriched uranium) stocks to prevent them from falling into the hands of surviving leaders of the Islamic Republic, other adversarial states, or Tehran’s terrorist proxies,” she added.
Since Iran’s nuclear program has been able to bounce back repeatedly following airstrikes, then forces on the ground may be the only way to get the job done, Trump suggested.
The president, however, said US troops would not be sent until Iran’s defenses allowed for the safe arrival of soldiers, noting that a special unit could be sent at some point to directly tackle Tehran’s nuclear facilities.
“At some point maybe we will,” Trump told reporters over the weekend. “We haven’t gone after it. We wouldn’t do it now. Maybe we will do it later.”
Annika Ganzeveld, the Middle East Portfolio Manager for the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute, said the latest strikes on Iran, including Thursday’s assault on the Taleghan 2 facility, may signal a new phase of the war directly targeting the nuclear facilities.
“With Iran’s launchers and defense systems degraded, it allows the US and Israel to make attacks on that front,” Ganzeveld told The Post.
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