Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has alleged that President Donald Trump could be only days away from ordering a nuclear attack on Iran’s underground Pickaxe Mountain facility.
Carlson, now a conservative political commentator and podcaster, warned that any strike on the deeply buried nuclear site would make World War Three “inevitable.”
He claimed Trump was facing intense pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Carlson described as “cornered and desperate” after losing his majority in Israel’s election.
“Netanyahu has been pushing hard for one,” Carlson said.
Neither the US nor Israel has publicly confirmed that such an attack is being planned.
The White House did not immediately respond to Our News Outlet’s request for comment.
Carlson offered no documentary evidence for the claim, instead referring to an unnamed source he described as an “informed observer.”
“Bibi calls Trump about it every day,” Carlson quoted the anonymous source as saying.
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has claimed Donald Trump could be days away from ordering a nuclear strike on Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain facility
US President Donald Trump speaks during a midterm campaign rally at Five Flags Center in Dubuque, Iowa, on November 1
Carlson’s warning followed remarks by Trump, who threatened Iran with “the hammer” during a campaign rally in Iowa on Sunday.
“And the only reason why I’m not finished with Iran is I want to be nice. I want to try and save all those lives if I can… But at some point we’re going to have to give them the hammer,” Trump told supporters.
The president spoke after discussing with Netanyahu on Saturday whether military operations against Tehran should be intensified, and when that escalation might begin.
In a post on X, where he has 17.9 million followers, Carlson wrote: “After the first nuclear strike, World War Three is inevitable. That war would be short and final.”
The post has been viewed 28.1 million times.
Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, commonly known as “Pickaxe Mountain,” sits south of Iran’s Natanz uranium-enrichment complex. The Natanz site was bombed by the United States during Operation Midnight Hammer, carried out amid the 12-day conflict between Iran and Israel in 2025.
Pickaxe Mountain is among the few Iranian facilities associated with the country’s nuclear programme that have not been hit by US or Israeli forces.
Unverified reports have suggested that some of Iran’s highly enriched uranium could be stored there, potentially allowing it to be further processed for use in nuclear weapons.
A satellite image shows the Natanz nuclear facility and Pickaxe Mountain near Natanz, Iran, on June 30
The ISIS thinktank says construction of the facility began in 2020
Recent satellite imagery appears to indicate that construction is still continuing at the location.
The ISIS thinktank says work began in 2020, after Iranian officials reported an explosion at Natanz that they attributed to sabotage.
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Tehran said the incident caused extensive damage. In September of that year, Ali Akbar Salehi, then head of Iran’s nuclear programme, said authorities had begun building a “modern, larger and more comprehensive hall in all dimensions in the heart of the mountain near Natanz” to manufacture advanced centrifuges.
Centrifuges are tube-like machines arranged in large cascades that spin uranium gas at high speed to increase its concentration.
Experts say the scale of the underground project suggests it could be used both to enrich uranium and to manufacture centrifuges capable of producing nuclear fuel.
Operating additional centrifuge cascades would give Tehran the ability to accelerate uranium enrichment beneath the protection of the mountain.
The site covers approximately 2.7 square kilometres, or one square mile, across Iran’s arid Central Plateau. It is protected by anti-aircraft systems, fencing and the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, while satellite images show several entrances.
An Associated Press report in 2023 cited analysis by specialists at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, who estimated that Iran was probably constructing the facility between 80 metres (260 feet) and 100 metres (328 feet) below ground.
Excavation has continued since then, prompting some experts to suggest that parts of the complex may now be located even deeper underground.
The difficulty of reaching such facilities helped drive the development of the US GBU-57 bomb, which the American military says can penetrate at least 60 metres (200 feet) of earth before exploding.
“An attack on Pickaxe Mountain could target the above-ground incoming power supply lines, the location of ventilation shafts [the targets in the attacks in June last year] and the open tunnel entrances,” the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said.
Satellite photographs indicate that the complex has two pairs of entrances, along with a security wall that has recently been completed.
According to the ISIS thinktank, two eastern tunnel portals have been reinforced and partly filled in since US and Israeli strikes began, limiting access for ground vehicles. However, the entrances have not been fully sealed.
Sam Lair, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told Reuters that strengthening the portals would make it more difficult to strike them with penetrating weapons such as bunker-busting bombs.
“We’ll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily,” Trump told reporters on July 21.
He repeated the warning on July 28, saying: “I know exactly what’s going on at Pickaxe. It’s not a big problem – we took out their nuclear sites, and we’ll have to take out Pickaxe if we don’t make a deal.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei has previously denied that nuclear work is taking place at Pickaxe Mountain.
He dismissed the US threats as “a fabricated pretext for aggression, destruction, and sabotage.”
As the US midterm campaign entered its final days, public frustration over rising energy and commodity prices linked to the conflict added pressure on Trump and Netanyahu, who have both threatened further attacks on Iran.
“I have a decision to make,” Trump told Fox News this week. “Do I finish it off, which would be very easy to do, or do I make a deal?”
In October, he also threatened to use America’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb, the massive ordnance air blast weapon, commonly known as the “mother of all bombs,” against the clandestine site.
The 21,000-pound MOAB is too large for conventional bombers and would need to be released from a slow-moving C-130 cargo aircraft, making any mission deep inside Iran particularly hazardous.
The United States has previously used another weapon, the massive ordnance penetrator, or MOP, against underground nuclear facilities at Natanz and Fordow because it is designed to break through rock and heavily reinforced concrete.
