Trump Says US Can Hit Iran’s Nuclear Fortress In One Hour, But Will It Take A Nuke?
President Donald Trump threatened to strike Iran's heavily fortified Pickaxe Mountain nuclear facility during a Monday night interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Francis Kapper·Nov 3, 2026·8 min read
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President Donald Trump threatened to strike Iran’s heavily fortified Pickaxe Mountain nuclear facility during a Monday night interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
The renewed threat came one day after conservative commentator Tucker Carlson alleged that the administration was considering a nuclear strike against the facility. Experts previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that Pickaxe Mountain’s deepest chambers could prove impossible to destroy with conventional weapons, potentially requiring a nuclear weapon to eliminate the underground complex entirely.
“My general sense is that conventional ordnance would be unlikely to decisively destroy such a deeply buried facility,” Philipp Bleek, fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, previously told the DCNF. “However, no matter how much a facility is buried, it must come to the surface via access tunnels, air shafts, etc. So even the most deeply buried facility can be entombed if intelligence and precision allow those locations to be effectively attacked.”
“Now, we might have to go after Pickaxe, but that’s not a big deal,” Trump said during his Monday night interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News.
The president suggested American forces could attack the underground facility in just one hour, adding that the military could act whenever he authorized it, according to a Roll Call transcript.
Trump portrayed the ongoing conflict with Iran as largely dormant, arguing that Tehran’s military had been devastated and that the United States possessed overwhelming military superiority. He nevertheless expressed optimism about reaching a diplomatic agreement, warning that fighting could resume if negotiations failed, according to the
The president’s comments followed extraordinary allegations that his administration was considering deploying nuclear weapons against Iran.
The war has claimed the lives of 23 American service members and wounded another 865 since U.S. and Israeli operations began Feb. 28, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System. Eleven deaths were classified as hostile and 12 as nonhostile, including accidents, illness and other incidents, the Washington Post reported, citing the Pentagon’s Oct. 29 update.
The human toll in Iran has been considerably greater. At least 3,636 people, including 1,701 civilians and at least 254 children, had been killed by April 7, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. That figure predates months of subsequent hostilities and therefore does not represent the complete death toll.
The conflict’s wider regional consequences have also been devastating. Israeli military operations in Lebanon killed at least 4,389 people and wounded 12,424 between March 2 and Oct. 12, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health, as reported by WAFA. The figure includes civilians and combatants and reflects fighting in a separate but related theater of the regional war.
The eight-month war has already cost American taxpayers an estimated $47.1 billion as of Oct. 16, including approximately $29 billion in expended munitions, $11.9 billion in operational expenses and $6.1 billion in equipment losses, the Associated Press reported, citing Pentagon estimates provided to Congress.
That figure excludes extensive damage to American military installations across the Middle East. Iranian missile and drone strikes caused at least $5 billion in damage to U.S. bases, potentially reaching $15 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported Oct. 31, citing American officials familiar with Pentagon assessments.
Carlson claimed Sunday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been pressuring Trump to authorize a nuclear strike against Pickaxe Mountain, potentially within days, according to his lengthy X post.
The DCNF independently corroborated the central allegation with a source familiar with the matter.
The facility’s underground chambers are estimated to sit approximately 100 meters, or 328 feet, beneath the mountain, although their exact configuration remains uncertain, according to the Institute for Science and International Security.
Whether a nuclear strike is even a realistic possibility remains fiercely disputed.
“There is a near-zero chance we will use nuclear weapons on Iran,” Robert Peters, director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF. “It is absurd to suggest that and no serious analyst believes that it is a possibility.”
Other experts argued that conventional military options remain available, challenging the suggestion that nuclear weapons would be necessary.
“A nuclear strike would be a highly dangerous and reckless action,” Spencer Faragasso, senior research fellow at the Institute for Science and International Security, told the DCNF. “Pickaxe Mountain does not require a nuclear weapon to damage or destroy it. Conventional weapons can be used to target vulnerabilities in the facility, such as the probable ventilation shafts that we’ve identified or the tunnel entrances. This could damage the facility enough and render it inaccessible, denying its use to the Iranian regime, at least temporarily.”
“I suspect this is part of a pressure campaign against Iran,” Bleek told the DCNF. “My best guess, and hope, is that even President Trump, and those around him, understand what a colossal mistake crossing the nuclear threshold would be.”
Trump has previously rejected the prospect of nuclear weapons use against Iran.
“I wouldn’t use nuclear. We don’t have to,” Trump said during an Oct. 15 interview with Newsmax host Rob Finnerty, according to a Roll Call transcript.
“A U.S. nuclear strike against Iran would badly weaken the sense of taboo against using nuclear weapons,” Jeff Knopf, professor and program chair of the Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, told the DCNF. “The net results would not be in the U.S. national interest. In the short term, it would lead to global condemnation of the United States and leave us more isolated diplomatically. If a U.S. nuclear strike leads other nuclear-armed countries to feel freer to consider nuclear attacks of their own, the most likely targets would be the United States or our friends and allies.”
The immediate consequences could extend well beyond Pickaxe Mountain itself.
An underground nuclear explosion could produce radioactive material capable of escaping into the atmosphere through the damaged surrounding rock, potentially exposing nearby populations and communities farther downwind, according to a National Academies study.
“An operation as misguided as this could potentially release significant radioactive nuclear fallout from the ejection of rubble, dust, and debris contaminated by the nuclear explosion, especially in a scenario employing multiple successive strikes,” Matthew Wallin, chief executive officer of the American Security Project, told the DCNF. “Unlike the underground nuclear tests of the Cold War, the ability to control for accidental venting of pressure from the explosion could not be controlled for, as the shaft created by a penetrator could not be subsequently sealed.”
The strategic repercussions could be equally significant, particularly regarding the use of nuclear weapons by Russia and China.
“A U.S. nuclear strike on Iran would be an incredibly unwise decision that would be both a humanitarian and a strategic catastrophe,” Stephen Herzog, professor of the practice and director of the Middlebury College Office of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told the DCNF. “Even if the military did wind up destroying Pickaxe Mountain, radioactive fallout would endanger civilians who live very far beyond the facility. Washington would also be shattering the ‘nuclear taboo’ that has made for more than 80 years of restraint and nuclear non-use.”
Carlson also alleged that Russia had privately warned other governments that American nuclear use against Iran could justify Russian nuclear attacks against Ukraine, according to his X post.
However, the Kremlin’s purported warning has not been independently substantiated by publicly available documentation.
Other specialists warned that an American nuclear strike could encourage additional countries to pursue nuclear weapons rather than deter their development.
“Nuclear weapons have not been used in conflict since 1945,” Matthew Sharp, senior nuclear fellow at the Center for Nuclear Security Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told the DCNF. “If the Trump Administration believes that whatever is going on at Pickaxe poses such an extreme threat to the United States that we need to end that record of non-use, they should make and defend that case.”
The United States has maintained nuclear weapons for decades without using them in combat since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, according to the United Nations.
Breaking that precedent could fundamentally alter how other nuclear-armed governments assess the circumstances under which such weapons could be employed.
“The use of nuclear weapons should be reserved to only the most dire and extreme circumstances, existential scenarios, such as one where the survival of the nation is in direct mortal danger,” Faragasso told the DCNF. “Using a nuclear weapon now would break the status quo that has existed since 1945: that these weapons are too dangerous and risky to use, and any use of them raises the possibility of nuclear war between great powers.”
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