Striking Iran's 100m-Deep Pickaxe Mountain: How Space Tech Shapes the Attack

For the space and defense community, the standoff over Pickaxe Mountain is a live-fire test case for the capabilities and vulnerabilities of space-based assets in high-end conflict. The facility’s 100-meter depth means that only the heaviest penetrator bombs can reach it, and their effectiveness hinges on uninterrupted satellite imagery, signals intelligence, and GPS guidance—systems Iran has shown it will try to blind or disrupt. With Tehran threatening to expand the war, any strike package must factor in jamming, spoofing, and potential kinetic attacks on ISR satellites, making this a bellwether for how modern warfare extends from terrestrial battlegrounds to orbital ones.

President Donald Trump’s warning on July 21, 2026, that the United States would “very probably pretty soon” strike Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain has thrust a deeply buried and little-known facility into the center of a rapidly escalating US-Iran confrontation. The site, officially declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2020 as a future centrifuge assembly plant, is now believed by Israeli intelligence to house a portion of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile and advanced centrifuges—making it a prime target in any campaign to dismantle Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure. This threat comes on the heels of joint US-Israeli strikes in June 2025 that hit the nearby Natanz enrichment complex and other nuclear sites, spurring a surge in construction at Pickaxe Mountain as Iran raced to harden and possibly expand the site. The facility’s clandestine nature, extreme depth, and geopolitical implications present a formidable intelligence, operational, and strategic challenge that could define the next phase of Middle Eastern conflict.

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This threat comes on the heels of joint US-Israeli strikes in June 2025 that hit the nearby Natanz enrichment complex and other nuclear sites, spurring a surge in construction at Pickaxe Mountain as Iran raced to harden and possibly expand the site.

Satellite imagery analyzed by the Institute for Science and International Security reveals a sprawling underground complex built at least 100 meters beneath the Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La mountain, roughly one mile south of the previously bombed Natanz facility. The site is not yet operational, but its multiple tunnel entrances have been reinforced with thick concrete blast doors designed to withstand heavy airstrikes, and a large security perimeter suggests a high-value target. The depth alone places Pickaxe Mountain beyond the reach of conventional bunker-buster munitions; only the most advanced penetrators—such as the US Air Force’s GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator—could hope to reach 100 meters through rock, and even then their effectiveness would depend on precise targeting, which in turn relies heavily on persistent space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). This dependence on satellite imagery and GPS-guided navigation creates a delicate interplay: any US attack would likely begin with cyber and electronic warfare operations to blind Iran’s air defenses, but Iran could respond by jamming GPS signals or targeting allied ISR satellites, raising the risk of a broader conflict that spills into the space domain.