Buried deep under granite, the site near the Natanz nuclear complex, roughly 140 miles south of Tehran, has been under the watchful eyes of global intelligence agencies as a likely location for Iran’s new and undeclared enrichment facility.
A suspected Iranian nuclear site, deep inside Pickaxe Mountain, has seen a surge of construction this year, even as the war in the Middle East continued, according to a group of analysts who reviewed six years of satellite imagery.
However, Tehran never facilitated the move. The report about the surge in activity at Pickaxe Mountain came despite US President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to strike the site. Analysts at CSIS noted that the surge in activity at the site could indicate Tehran may be building a centrifuge assembly facility, as indicated in 2020 by then head of Iran’s nuclear program, Ali Akbar Salehi, who announced an underground centrifuge assembly facility near Natanz. Iran could also be expanding activities at Pickaxe Mountain to house a uranium enrichment facility, with the hopes that this facility could enrich Iran’s existing stockpile of around 440 kilograms of 60 per cent enriched uranium to weapons-grade material, they said.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in September said the satellite imagery of the site was insufficient to determine what was happening at Pickaxe Mountain and called for the UN’s nuclear watchdog on the ground to verify the site’s purpose.
