US President Donald Trump on Friday said the United States could “hit” Iran’s heavily fortified underground nuclear site known as Pickaxe Mountain “very soon”, days after Washington targeted Iranian military targets.
Speaking to reporters at the Oval Office, Trump defended the months-long US military campaign against the Islamic Republic, saying its primary objective was to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
“We’re in five months now. And you know what we did in five months? “We know everybody that’s moving at Pickaxe; we know everybody that’s moving everywhere all over Iran. Iran had strongly condemned the latest American strikes, accusing Washington of violating Iranian sovereignty and targeting non-military infrastructure and civilian sites across several provinces.
They’re not going to have a nuclear weapon; that’s what we did,” Trump said. “We may hit Pickaxe very soon because if there was anything going on with Pickaxe,” Trump said, adding that US intelligence was closely monitoring activity at the site. And if anything goes bad, we hit them; we hit them hard,” Trump said. “If we didn’t go in there, you wouldn’t have Israel right now, you wouldn’t have the Middle East, and they probably would go at European cities and our cities next,” Trump said. The remarks came days after the US Central Command said American forces had completed a wave of strikes against Iranian military targets. The operations targeted facilities associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps last week, including air-defence installations, radar systems, maritime assets, mine-laying capabilities and communications sites, according to CENTCOM. “I think they’re tired of putting it in and getting blown up,” he said. Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Iranian armed forces had responded with what it described as “crushing defensive strikes” against US military bases in West Asia that Tehran said served as the origin, support and staging points for American attacks.
