As Americans headed to the polls for the midterms, Tucker Carlson escalated his bickering with President Trump by claiming that the administration was “within days” of launching a nuclear strike on Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain facility under pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In a detailed post on X, political commentator and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is imploring Trump to launch a nuclear strike on Iran, particularly on Pickaxe Mountain.
“Under pressure from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Trump administration may be within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran. The target would be Pickaxe Mountain in central Iran, where Israeli intelligence claims the Iranian government has restarted its nuclear enrichment program,” Tucker Carlson wrote in a lengthy post on X.
“No conventional weapon in the American arsenal can penetrate 300 feet of solid granite to destroy the tunnels where enrichment is supposedly taking place. The only military option is a nuclear strike. Netanyahu has been pushing hard for one.
“Bibi calls Trump about it every day,” says an informed observer, he added.
Carlson noted that the Israeli PM is pressuring Trump after failing to secure a majority in the recent elections, which has left him “cornered and desperate.”
Furthermore, he emphasized, “We’ve been sleepwalking toward this moment for months. Since February, the administration has quietly rewritten America’s nuclear doctrine to make first use of so-called “battlefield nukes” easier and therefore more likely. No one in Washington in either party seems bothered by this. Now we’re on the brink of it.”
Carlson added: “To his credit, he’s hesitating. At the moment, Trump is listening to his vice president, JD Vance, and to his envoy and friend Steve Witkoff, both of whom argue a deal with Iran can be made,” he noted.
The White House responded by saying that “Tucker Carlson lost his way long ago due to a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, and he has no insight into military planning or the Commander-in-Chief’s thinking.” It added that Trump “has a wide range of options available regarding Iran, and he will do what is right to keep the American people safe.”
Earlier, Trump said his country had managed to knock out much of Iran’s military, but it still had to “take care of” one or two targets, including a suspected nuclear site at Pickaxe Mountain.
“You probably could look at Pickaxe Mountain, and you have to take care of that. We can do that all very quickly,” he stated, referring to a suspected underground nuclear complex.
Trump has, in fact, been rather vocal about his intentions to obliterate the Pickaxe Mountain on several occasions, as you can read more about in a detailed EurAsian Times report.
Locally known as the Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, it is a massive underground tunnel complex near Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Isfahan province, which the US military attacked during Operation Midnight Hammer.
Earlier this year, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei emphasized that “no nuclear activity is taking place” at Kolang (Pickaxe) Mountain and described Washington’s attention to the site as “a fabricated pretext for aggression, destruction, and sabotage.”
Experts argued that a US nuclear strike on Iran would not merely escalate the conflict in West Asia, but also possibly destroy the global nuclear non-proliferation system.
Reza Nasri, an International lawyer and foreign policy analyst, argued that a nuclear strike on Iran could convince other countries that abandoning nuclear weapons leaves them vulnerable, giving them grounds to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) under Article X and pursue their own nuclear deterrents.
Furthermore, Nasri stated that the warning is that attacking a country that has remained within the treaty could destroy confidence in international agreements, accelerate nuclear proliferation, and destabilize global security.
He also drew attention to the fact that Israel has never joined the NPT, maintains an undeclared nuclear arsenal, and has not accepted the same international safeguards that have traditionally been demanded of Iran by the West.
Dr. Malcolm Davis, Senior Analyst, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said: “Under the US Military Code of Justice (the UCMJ), the US military has an obligation to refuse illegal orders from POTUS. That would include unnecessary use of nuclear weapons against Iran.”
Can the US Go Nuclear?
The site at Pickaxe Mountain is believed to be as deep as 100 meters (328 feet) and was chosen to protect it from airstrikes. This suggests the new complex is deeper and better fortified than Fordo and Natanz, which the US bombed during Operation Midnight Hammer in 2025.
The bunker-buster GBU-57, weighing about 13,000 kilograms, can penetrate about 60 feet of concrete or 200 feet of earth before exploding. This means it may not be able to wreck the Pickaxe Mountain facility, which lies about 328 feet below the surface.
Similarly, doubts exist over the capability of the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb—commonly called the “Mother of All Bombs” because it is not a bunker-buster or deep penetrator, and detonates above or near the surface, making it better suited for “huge area clearance” or psychological impact than destroying fortified facilities.
The third option, that Carlson might be referring to, is going nuclear with the B61-11 thermonuclear gravity bomb, which is currently the only known specialized air-delivered deep-penetrating weapon in America’s arsenal.
It has a rocket booster at the back that lets it descend into subterranean installations and a substantially reinforced outer shell that may have a depleted-uranium penetrating nose section. The B61-11’s maximum output is reportedly between 340 and 400 kilotons, and it could be carried by the B-2 Spirit bomber.
For perspective, the bombs dropped by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 and 21 kilotons, respectively.
B61-11 does not dig deep like a conventional bunker buster. Available test data and official descriptions indicate limited penetration, typically a few meters. However, the key mechanism is ground-shock coupling.
Even shallow burial transfers far more energy into the ground than a surface or airburst, increasing effectiveness against underground targets, meaning it could possibly obliterate the alleged nuclear facilities buried inside Pickaxe Mountain.
The next “nuclear option” is the B61-12 variant, which has a precise guidance package in a redesigned tail kit, and is believed to be the B61-11’s possible successor.
Its higher accuracy through the new guided tail kit could compensate for its lower maximum yield, allowing it to hold many of the same targets at risk. However, the B61-12’s maximum yield is supposedly 50 kilotons, although it is also a dial-a-yield design with several yield levels.
However, the US abandoned plans to replace the B61-11 with the B61-12.
Then there is a more potent B61-13 model with the same precision-guidance tail kit as the B61-12, created to give “the President additional options against certain harder and large-area military targets.”
The maximal yield of this variant is thought to be comparable to that of the original B61-7 on which the B61-11 is based, but even this munition is not meant as a direct successor and is not ready for use.
This leaves B61-11 as the only tactical option that the USAF could employ to attack a hardened facility under Pickaxe. However, even that may not be a perfect solution. It might cause catastrophic effects, not only in Iran but worldwide.
- Contact the author at sakshi.tiwari13 (at) outlook.com
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