US may strike Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain

US President Donald Trump has said the United States may need to strike Pickaxe Mountain, a site associated with Iran’s nuclear program, to ensure the country cannot develop nuclear weapons.

In an interview with Newsmax on Thursday night, Trump also said he would not use nuclear weapons in the war with Iran, which began with US and Israeli strikes in February.

Trump said the United States wanted to ensure that Iran never obtained nuclear weapons because “they would have used it” if they had one.

“Its nuclear facilities are buried under hundreds of thousands of tons of mountain. Now we’re looking at Pickaxe Mountain. We may have to go there. We’ll hit that facility too. We’ll destroy it quickly,” he said.

Pickaxe Mountain is a fortified facility located near one of Tehran’s main nuclear sites. It is built deep underground.

The US president also said there was no need to use a nuclear bomb in Iran.

“I’m not going to use nuclear weapons. We don’t need to do that,” he said.

Trump reiterated his previous position that he was not considering sending US ground troops to Iran.

Trump did not say whether he had authorized the use of the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), known as the “Mother of All Bombs,” against Iran’s energy infrastructure and nuclear facilities. However, he said the MOAB was not a nuclear bomb.