How Do You Destroy Pickaxe Mountain? The Hard Limits of American Air Power
Donald Trump has declared that the United States intends to "take out" Pickaxe Mountain, Iran's deeply buried nuclear-related complex near Natanz. The phrase sounds decisive. It suggests that America can identify a dangerous installation, send in its bombers and missiles, and erase the threat. Yet the deeper one looks into the mountain, the less convincing that promise becomes. America can certainly strike Pickaxe Mountain. It can destroy buildings around it, collapse entrances, crater access roads, sever electricity and communications, kill personnel and delay construction. What it may not be able to do is destroy the underground complex itself, still less guarantee that Iran's nuclear knowledge, equipment and ambitions have been eliminated.
Pickaxe Mountain, known in Persian as Kūh-e Kolang Gaz Lā, lies near the damaged Natanz enrichment complex. Satellite analysis indicates that the installation has at least two pairs of tunnel entrances, possibly serving a multilevel underground complex. Estimates place parts of the facility at least 100 metres beneath rock, with some overburden possibly considerably greater depending upon the tunnel layout. It appears to be deeper and more heavily protected than Fordow, the Iranian enrichment site that was already regarded as an exceptionally difficult target. Public satellite assessments suggest that Pickaxe Mountain remains under construction and may not yet be operational, although its precise purpose remains uncertain. Iranian officials have previously linked the project to replacing centrifuge-production capacity destroyed by sabotage in 2020, while Western analysts suspect that it could eventually support centrifuge manufacturing, uranium enrichment, storage or weaponisation work. There is no conclusive public evidence that all or any of those activities are occurring there now.
This uncertainty produces the central paradox. If America waits until the site is definitely operational, Iran may already have moved sensitive machinery, enriched material or specialised personnel deep inside the mountain. At that point, conventional bombing may be unable to reach them. Yet if America attacks now, it may expend scarce and extremely valuable weapons against an unfinished complex that contains little of military significance. The attack would then be preventive in the strictest sense: not the destruction of an active nuclear facility, but an attempt to prevent one from coming into existence.
The most powerful conventional weapon available for such a mission is the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The United States Air Force describes it as a weapon specifically designed to attack deeply buried and heavily protected weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities. It is an enormous precision-guided bomb delivered by strategic bombers and intended to penetrate earth, rock and reinforced structures before detonating. But even a weapon of this size is governed by physics. Penetration depends upon impact speed, angle, casing strength, geology, reinforcement and the depth and orientation of the target. A mountain is not simply a large concrete roof. It may contain hundreds of metres of fractured rock, internal voids, shock-absorbing galleries and tunnel systems whose exact locations are unknown.
Repeated strikes might deepen a crater or exploit damage created by earlier weapons, but this is far easier in theory than in practice. Bombs do not obediently travel down the same narrow path through shattered rock. Successive impacts can redistribute debris, alter the target geometry and make later weapons less predictable. Even if a bomb reaches a tunnel, the blast may destroy only one chamber or section. A large underground installation is likely to be compartmentalised precisely so that damage in one area does not destroy the whole complex.
Cruise missiles such as Tomahawks and air-launched weapons such as the JASSM-ER can strike surface infrastructure with great accuracy and from long range, but they are not magical mountain-boring devices. They could destroy ventilation shafts, substations, security facilities, construction equipment, access roads and exposed tunnel portals. Such attacks could render the facility temporarily unusable and perhaps trap equipment or personnel underground. Yet entrances can eventually be excavated, power can be restored, new shafts can be drilled and machinery can be replaced. The mountain itself remains.
This is the essential distinction between destroying a facility and suppressing it. A conventional campaign could suppress Pickaxe Mountain by repeatedly striking every visible sign of activity. Whenever Iran repaired an entrance, installed ventilation or moved equipment toward the complex, another strike could follow. In effect, America could place the site under permanent aerial siege. That might prevent it from becoming operational for months or years. But such a policy would require continuing intelligence, persistent surveillance, regional bases, tanker aircraft, bombers, escorts, electronic warfare and a steady supply of precision weapons. It would also mean that the United States had committed itself to bombing Iran not once, but indefinitely.
That is where the military problem becomes a strategic one. Weapons can destroy objects, but they cannot by themselves settle political questions. Iran's nuclear program is not contained in one mountain. It consists of scientists, engineers, manufacturing knowledge, supply networks, computer files, dispersed laboratories and political decisions. Even the complete physical destruction of Pickaxe Mountain would not erase the expertise required to rebuild somewhere else. Indeed, the attack could convince Iranian leaders that only a completed nuclear deterrent could protect them from future American intervention.
Could nuclear weapons destroy the mountain? A sufficiently large nuclear device, especially one detonated at or beneath the surface, could produce far greater ground shock than any conventional bomb. But even then, the result would not necessarily be the neat elimination imagined by armchair strategists. The blast might collapse sections of the facility without destroying every chamber. It would throw immense quantities of radioactive earth and rock into the atmosphere, contaminate the surrounding region and cross a nuclear threshold that has remained unbroken in warfare since 1945. The political consequences would dwarf the original target. Russia, China and other states would reassess every assumption about American nuclear restraint. Iran would almost certainly retaliate through every means available. Any supposed tactical solution would create a global strategic crisis.
A ground assault is sometimes mentioned as the only certain means of entering, mapping and physically destroying a deeply buried complex. Yet this, too, is far easier to discuss than execute. Pickaxe Mountain lies inside Iran, protected by a large state with armed forces, missiles, drones, security units and extensive knowledge of the terrain. Reaching the installation, securing its entrances, fighting through tunnels and emplacing demolition charges would require an operation of extraordinary scale and risk. It would not resemble a brief commando raid. It could become the opening phase of a land war.
There may also be entrances, shafts or chambers that outside intelligence has not detected. Underground facilities are deliberately designed to deceive observation. Spoil piles can reveal excavation, but not necessarily the complete internal plan. A successful raid against known portals might leave unknown sections untouched. Iranian engineers could construct new exits or bypass collapsed galleries. Without occupying the surrounding territory for an extended period, the attacker could never be entirely certain that the installation had been permanently neutralised.
The most realistic military objective, therefore, is not annihilation but delay. America could strike Pickaxe Mountain before it becomes operational, destroy the visible construction infrastructure and make Iran rebuild under constant observation. This might buy time. It might prevent the installation from being used during the present conflict. It might increase the financial and technical cost of Iran's nuclear program. But it could not guarantee that the program had ended.
That conclusion may be politically unsatisfying, but it is strategically important. American leaders frequently speak of military targets as though they were switches that can simply be turned off. Take out the bunker, destroy the reactor, eliminate the missile site, decapitate the command structure. The language conceals the difference between tactical success and strategic victory. A bomb may hit exactly where intended and still fail to achieve the broader purpose for which it was dropped.
Trump's threat may partly be psychological warfare. Publicly declaring that Pickaxe Mountain is under constant observation warns Iran not to transfer sensitive material there. It may also be intended to force Tehran back into negotiations. The threat of destruction can sometimes achieve more than destruction itself. But such coercion works only when the threat is credible and the demanded political settlement is attainable.
The hard truth is that Pickaxe Mountain was built precisely because Iran studied the weaknesses of American air power. The United States dominates the skies, possesses unmatched surveillance and can deliver enormous destructive force almost anywhere. Iran's answer has been to bury critical infrastructure beneath enough rock that American technological superiority becomes less decisive. The deeper the target, the more the contest shifts from precision bombing to endurance, intelligence and political will.
America can bomb Pickaxe Mountain. It can seal its doors, smash its surface installations and delay whatever Iran intends to build beneath it. What America cannot confidently promise is that one spectacular attack will make the problem disappear. Mountains are patient. Engineers dig again. Nuclear knowledge survives explosions. If Washington chooses to strike, it should do so with an honest understanding of the likely result: disruption rather than eradication, delay rather than finality, and possibly the beginning of a longer war rather than the conclusion of one.
The real question is therefore not how to destroy Pickaxe Mountain. It is whether the United States has a coherent strategy for what happens after the bombs fall.
https://weichert.substack.com/p/america-can-bomb-pickaxe-mountainbut
