President Donald Trump said the US may have to target Pickaxe Mountain, a site linked to Iran’s nuclear program, as he aims to ensure Tehran does not get a nuclear weapon. In an interview with Newsmax on Thursday night, Trump also said he would not use a nuclear weapon in the war on Iran, which began in February with US-Israeli strikes.
Trump said the US wanted to make sure Iran will never have a nuclear weapon “because if they had it, they would use it.” “Their nuclear is buried under millions of tons of mountain. Now we’re looking at Pickaxe Mountain. We may have to go there. We’ll take a shot at that one. We’ll knock it out fast,” Trump told the news outlet.
Pickaxe Mountain is a fortified facility buried deep underground near one of Tehran’s main nuclear sites.
The US president said there was no need to use a nuclear bomb in Iran. “I wouldn’t use nuclear. We don’t have to.”
Trump reiterated he was not considering using US ground troops in Iran.
Trump did not say if he had authorized the use of GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, also known as the “mother of all bombs,” against Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites. He did say the MOAB bomb was not a nuclear bomb.
Separately, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian on Friday urged countries to condemn what he called “ecocide” in the Middle East caused by “wars of aggression”.
Pezeshkian said the conflicts in Gaza and the wider Middle East had inflicted a significant toll on nature that extended beyond borders and required “international solutions”.
"What has occurred in our region as a result of wars of aggression is ecocide, or environmental genocide, and it must be condemned,” Pezeshkian told a nature summit in Armenia attended by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
