Bunker Buster or Special Forces? Experts Question Success Rate of Strike on Iran's 'Pickaxe Mountain'

As U.S. President Donald Trump has signaled a planned imminent strike on "Pickaxe Mountain," suspected to be a secret Iranian nuclear facility, experts remain divided over whether the U.S. military can completely destroy the site.

While the exact purpose of the Pickaxe Mountain facility, reportedly under construction since 2020, has not yet been clearly identified, the United States and Israel suspect it is a site used for high-level uranium enrichment for nuclear weapons development.

Last June, the U.S. military carried out airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, including Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, following President Trump's orders.

At the time, seven state-of-the-art B-2 stealth bombers departed from the U.S., carrying a total of fourteen GBU-57 bunker busters—two each—dropping twelve on Fordow and two on Natanz.

A bunker buster refers to a massive air-dropped penetrating bomb designed to explode after burrowing deep underground.

The GBU-57 is known to be capable of penetrating up to about 60 meters underground to devastate bunkers and tunnels, and dropping them consecutively on the same spot can produce an effect of burrowing even deeper.

Given President Trump's threat of a strike, it is being discussed that the U.S. military could load these B-2 bombers with a large quantity of bunker busters, much like last June, and drop as many as possible.

Citing a report by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a U.S. think tank, CNN reported on the 22nd (local time) that the secret facility inside Pickaxe Mountain requires ventilation, heating, cooling, supply transportation, power supply, and personnel, and that all of these systems provide vulnerabilities that the U.S. and Israel can exploit.

This means the facility could be destroyed by dropping bunker busters into small passages leading to the site, such as ventilation shafts and entrances.

However, counterarguments suggest that bunker buster airstrikes would not be effective because the underground facility is located too deep and the bedrock is solid.

James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, pointed out on X (formerly Twitter) that an airstrike of this method could collapse tunnel entrances but fail to collapse the tunnels themselves or their core facilities. He stated, "Deep underground facilities like Pickaxe Mountain are essentially invulnerable to non-nuclear weapons," adding, "The U.S. will not use nuclear weapons."

Accordingly, the ISIS report suggested that "ground forces might be better suited to carry out attacks or destruction operations."

The problem is that because the mountain is located almost in the center of Iranian territory, deploying ground forces such as special operations units to attack the facility carries significant risks.

The New York Times (NYT) noted, "For U.S. forces to reach Pickaxe Mountain, they would have to fly deep into central Iran, exposing troops to attacks during the infiltration process, and they could face drone and missile strikes even after landing."

(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.