President Donald Trump previewed that the United States could strike Pickaxe Mountain in Iran “very soon and very heavily.”
Trump made the comments in the White House’s Oval Office on Tuesday during a meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun.
“We follow the material,” Trump told reporters. “That’s where the action is, and we’ll be hitting that area very probably pretty soon… We’ll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily.”
Israeli intelligence has indicated Iran had moved its nuclear centrifuges to Pickaxe Mountain, an underground facility near Natanz.
On Tuesday, Trump repeated that Iran’s nuclear ambitions had been undermined because of his actions, starting with last year’s Operation Midnight Hammer and, again, with this year’s Operation Epic Fury mission that commenced the war.
“We have done damage that will take them 20-25 years to recover from,” he said. “So, if we left tomorrow, we had a big success, but we’re not leaving tomorrow.”
More than a week into an uptick of strikes against Iran amid the collapse of peace talks and the memorandum of understanding, Trump added the Iranian regime hasn’t “seen anything yet” and that the U.S. has “been nice.”
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The president also downplayed the prospect of Iranian-supported Houthi rebels opening up another front of the war with their blockade in the Red Sea.
“If something like that happens, we take care of it,” he said. “We’ve done that with the Houthis before, and we haven’t heard from them in a while since we did what we did originally.”