'We Know Exactly What's Going On': Trump Eyes Iran's Untouched Nuclear Tunnel as Tehran Digs In

President Trump called into Fox News on Sunday morning and boiled the whole Iran standoff down to one line. "Now my question is, do I make a deal with them or do I finish them off?" he told guest host Larry Kudlow on "Sunday Morning Futures," phoning in from the White House. "That's my only question."

Then he named the one piece of Iran's nuclear program America hasn't bombed yet. "We know exactly what's going on at Pickaxe Mountain," Trump said. "We know the other three are obliterated. They don't make too much of a move there. We watch."

That matters because Pickaxe Mountain is where Iran's nuclear hopes are hiding now. If Tehran tucked away centrifuges after the last round of strikes, this granite bunker is where the people who track the program think they went. A president telling the world on live TV that he's watching it is a message to Tehran, not small talk.

What Pickaxe Mountain is

Its Farsi name is Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La. It's a tunnel complex dug into a granite mountain about 2 kilometers south of the Natanz enrichment plant. Iran broke ground in 2020 and called it a centrifuge assembly shop. The International Atomic Energy Agency has asked for information and access, and Iran has never answered, according to a September analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

That CSIS study found more road traffic at the site in 2026 than at any point in its history: tunnel entrances raised and hardened, internal roads paved, dirt piles hauled off. CSIS reads that as a site moving from digging to probably building out the inside. CSIS also found the work kept going at a high rate after the June 17 understanding in which Iran promised to "maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program."

Now the doors are shut. Satellite pictures from Oct. 7 show the eastern tunnel entrances "remain blocked by earth" and earthen roadblocks still cutting off the western ones, two months running, the Institute for Science and International Security reported Oct. 16. The institute says that fits The Wall Street Journal's July report that Israeli intelligence believes Iran moved centrifuges and centrifuge parts into the tunnels after the 12-Day War.

Think of a bank that bricks over its own vault door. Nobody does that to protect an empty room.

It's also a hard target. Some open-source estimates put the halls 80 to 100 meters down. America's biggest bunker buster, the 30,000-pound GBU-57, can reportedly punch about 60 meters into the ground before it goes off, CSIS notes. The institute says it has spotted a probable ventilation shaft, the same kind of weak point the B-2s used at Fordow in June 2025.

The cash Trump keeps bringing up

Trump framed his choice against the deal Barack Obama made. "He gave them $1.7 billion in green cash," Trump said. "He tried to buy his way out of it, and they used it to try and create nuclear weapons, and they bought missiles all over the place... They thought he was a sucker. And they take advantage of suckers. And I'm not a sucker, that I can tell you. They have never been hit so hard."

The settlement he means is real. On Jan. 17, 2016, Obama announced the U.S. was paying off a decades-old Iranian government claim at an international tribunal, saying Iran "will be returned its own funds, including appropriate interest." The total came to about $1.7 billion, Reuters reported that day. That August, State Department spokesman John Kirby acknowledged from the briefing room podium that the first $400 million, delivered in cash, was held back until the American prisoners Iran had freed were out of the country. The administration insisted it wasn't ransom.

Who controls Hormuz

Trump also claimed the strait Iran keeps threatening is now America's. "Remember, we now control the Hormuz Strait. They get nothing. We get everything. They get nothing," he said. "We're doing more business through the Hormuz Strait today than before the war started."

The numbers back him up. Ship tracker Kpler data published by The Wall Street Journal show Middle East oil flows topped 24 million barrels a day in the week through Oct. 18, above the 23.3 million before the war. Iran's own exports have nearly dried up under the U.S. Navy blockade, which Central Command says has kept at least $25 billion of Iranian crude off the market.

Tehran's answer: nothing changes

Iran's foreign minister had already given Tehran's answer earlier Sunday. "Whether war happens or not, our policies remain in place," Abbas Araghchi said at a Tehran event honoring the late diplomat Kamal Kharrazi, Tasnim reported. He said the management of the Strait of Hormuz "will not be the same as before" and demanded the complete withdrawal of foreign forces from the region.

He also said Iran is insisting, in talks run through Pakistan, Qatar and others, that any end to the war has to cover "all fronts." Put plainly: Tehran wants a say over the world's busiest oil chokepoint, it wants the U.S. Navy gone, and it wants every front of the war folded into one deal. That's not an offer. It's a list of demands.

What's next

Trump didn't set a deadline. "I have a decision to make," he said. "Do I finish it off, which would be very easy to do, or do I make a deal? That's a decision." He heads to Michigan on Sunday to campaign.

Meanwhile the hardware is in place. The carrier USS George Washington has been loading bunker busters in the Arabian Sea, as we reported Saturday. The door to a deal is still open. Iran just spent Sunday telling the world it doesn't plan to walk through it.