After U.S. strikes, Iran increases work at mysterious underground site

Iran has increased construction at a mysterious underground site in the months since the U.S. and Israel pummeled its main nuclear facilities, suggesting Tehran has not entirely ceased work on its suspected weapons program and may be cautiously rebuilding, according to a Washington Post review of satellite imagery and independent analysis.

The ongoing work is at a site known as Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, or Pickaxe Mountain, where since 2020, Iranian engineers have been tunneling deep into the Zagros mountain range — about a mile south of the nuclear complex at Natanz, which was a target of U.S. bombing strikes on June 22.



The purpose of Pickaxe Mountain remains unclear. International nuclear inspectors have never visited and Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Tehran rebuffed his questions about the site earlier this year.

Analysts who have monitored its construction estimate the halls under Pickaxe Mountain may be even deeper — between 260 and 330 feet — than those at Iran’s Fordow facility, which U.S. warplanes struck with massive earth-penetrating bombs. The site’s aboveground footprint sprawls over roughly a square mile of mountainside, with a pair of tunnel entrances on both the east and west side.

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