Beneath a remote mountain in Iran, construction has surged at a secretive underground site, just months after US and Israeli airstrikes targeted the government's key nuclear facilities. Satellite imagery and analysis show the work in progress at the underground site in the Zagros Mountains, the Washington Post reports. The installation, known as Pickaxe Mountain, sits a mile south of Natanz, one of the sites hit by American bombs in June. Despite the activity, analysts caution there's no indication that Iran is racing to rebuild its bomb-making capacity.
But Mohammad Eslami, who heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, told Sky News this week that the government does plan to rebuild its nuclear installations, per the BBC. International inspectors have never been allowed into the deeply buried site. Analysts are surprised by its scale: tunnels possibly deeper than Iran's Fordow uranium site and an aboveground footprint spanning a square mile. Since the June airstrikes, Iran has reinforced tunnel entrances, expanded security perimeters, and moved heavy equipment onsite, indicating ongoing construction below ground, per the Post.
Iran claims the site will house centrifuge assembly, replacing a facility lost to sabotage in 2020. But some experts suspect it might be designed for more sensitive work—potentially covert uranium enrichment or secure storage for near-weapons-grade uranium, particularly since the fate of Iran's substantial stockpile remains unknown. The strikes reportedly knocked out nearly all of Iran's 22,000 centrifuges, leaving it without a clear path to weapons-grade uranium.
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