Will hit Iran's Pickaxe N-site: Trump

Washington: US President Donald Trump on Friday said the United States could strike Iran’s heavily fortified underground nuclear facility known as Pickaxe Mountain “very soon”, warning that Washington was closely monitoring activity at the site.

Speaking to reporters at the Oval Office, Trump defended the months-long US military campaign against Iran, saying its main objective was to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon.

“We’re in five months now. And you know what we did in five months? They’re not going to have a nuclear weapon, that’s what we did,” Trump said. He warned that the US could target Pickaxe Mountain if it detected activity at the facility. “We know everybody that’s moving at Pickaxe, we know everybody that’s moving everywhere all over Iran. And if anything goes bad, we hit them, we hit them hard,” Trump said. Pickaxe Mountain is located near Iran’s heavily damaged Natanz uranium-enrichment facility and is believed to contain two deeply buried tunnel systems. The site’s underground construction is thought to make it significantly more resistant to conventional aerial attacks. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Israeli intelligence believed Iran had moved thousands of centrifuges to the deeply buried facility.

A US strike on the site could therefore represent a significant escalation in Washington’s campaign against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

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The Hans India