With His Latest Threats, Trump Signals to Iran That He Is Willing to Escalate
President Trump is facing a critical moment in the war, which has failed to bring about the “unconditional surrender” he once demanded.
David E. Sanger has reported on the efforts to counter Iran’s nuclear capabilities for more than two decades.
President Trump threatened on Tuesday to accelerate the war with Iran by returning the conflict to where it began, with a bunker-busting attack on one of the country’s nuclear facilities.
But the target he has in mind, known among Western intelligence agencies as Pickaxe Mountain , is not complete. No nuclear experts believe it houses the kind of working equipment to enrich uranium, and convert that material to bomb fuel, like the three major nuclear sites Mr. Trump ordered bombed in June 2025, in what the Pentagon called “Operation Midnight Hammer.”
At most, experts say, Pickaxe Mountain for now is a deep underground storage site.
But for Mr. Trump, facing a turning point in the war, it may make little difference whether Pickaxe Mountain is empty or giving cover to the surviving remnants of Iran’s stockpile of nuclear centrifuges, the machinery critical to churning out bomb fuel. In his own statements on Tuesday and those of his military advisers, who spent much of the afternoon dodging questions from Senate Democrats, Mr. Trump seemed mostly fixated on sending a message to Iran that his willingness to escalate knows no limits.
