Trump Threatens Imminent, Powerful Strike on Iran's Mountain Nuclear Facility

US President Donald Trump said at a White House press conference that American forces will soon strike an underground nuclear complex in Iran, buried deep inside a mountain near the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz.

Asked whether Iran had moved uranium-enrichment centrifuges into the underground facility, Trump said: "We don't have any information on that. If they don't have the material, that doesn't mean anything. They don't have it. We're tracking the material — that's the whole point."

The US president then issued a sharper warning: "There's a good chance we're going to be hitting that area pretty soon. And they won't be able to do a thing about it. Normally I wouldn't say something like that. If I thought they could do something about it, I'd never say it. But we're going to be hitting that area soon, and very hard," Trump threatened.

Trump made a similar statement a week earlier, telling conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that the US would likely strike the facility, codenamed Pickaxe, "relatively soon."

According to CNN, citing sources in Israel, Iran moved part of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium to the complex following last June's twelve-day war.

The mountain range, known in Farsi as Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, sits near Iran's Natanz enrichment plant, which was seriously damaged in earlier strikes. Inside the mountain lies a heavily fortified underground complex with two separate tunnel systems. Experts estimate the facilities are buried so deep that they lie beyond the reach of even the most powerful American bunker-buster bombs.

The conflict in the Middle East began on February 28, when the US and Israel launched a joint strike on Iran. In June, Washington and Tehran signed a memorandum of understanding.

Shortly afterward, however, Iran once again blocked the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas trade passes. Tehran justified the move by citing the US's "failure to fulfil its obligations." Hopes for resuming shipping through the strait and ending hostilities have once again been thrown into doubt.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz