“It’s a necessity extra necessary than bread.”
That’s how Iran’s rulers regard their drive to accumulate nuclear weapons, an activist hard-liner lately declared.
Secretary of Struggle Pete Hegseth’s shock go to to Israel this week, leaks about US and Israeli army preparations, and remarks by President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu counsel Washington and Jerusalem are significantly weighing recent strikes on Iran — largely to disrupt a nuclear rebuild that Tehran is now brazenly admitting.
The regime’s unbending pursuit of nuclear weapons and its refusal to make peace remind us why it’s so harmful — and why a brand new, restricted spherical of army strikes could also be needed.
One choice reportedly below dialogue: dropping the most important typical bomb within the US arsenal, the GBU-43/B Large Ordnance Air Blast bomb — the “mom of all bombs” — to destroy entry to Iran’s deeply buried Pickaxe Mountain advanced.
Trump stated final week he might must strike the location, as a result of any Iranian push for nuclear weapons is insupportable.
“They’d use it,” he warned.
US and Israeli strikes in 2025 and 2026 set Iran’s nuclear program again by greater than two years.
Now the Islamic Republic is making an attempt to make up for misplaced time by rebuilding its nuclear-weapons choice underground.
Along with Pickaxe, Tehran is brazenly reconstituting its program at a number of websites that ought to prime the US goal lists.
At Minzadehei, a facility the place a key nuclear part was manufactured, the Institute for Science and Worldwide Safety noticed speedy rebuilding exercise in satellite tv for pc photographs from September and October.
Israeli forces struck and all however destroyed the location again in March.
A parallel reconstruction effort is underway at Taleghan 2, an above-ground bunker lengthy linked by the Worldwide Atomic Vitality Company with high-explosive work and warhead experiments.
Israel hit Taleghan 2 in October 2024 and once more in March 2026, after an earlier rebuild restored a high-explosive containment vessel.
Restore work resumed in June: Iran has capped penetration holes the place bombs hit, added concrete blast safety, strengthened the construction, and has hidden additional exercise below tarps whereas development tools operates.
Additional rebuilding is going on at Shahid Boroujerdi, one other tunnel advanced linked to previous work on uranium steel for nuclear-weapon cores.
This week the Overseas Coverage Analysis Institute recognized new development exercise there, in addition to the presence of transport containers.
As of September, Iran was additionally repairing buildings at Malek Ashtar College, which Israel struck this yr to halt the regime’s nuclear-weaponization work there.
Whether or not Iran is pursuing salvage or reconstitution efforts, the tempo of labor at these websites ought to elevate alarm.
At Pickaxe Mountain, the 300-foot-deep tunnel advanced south of Natanz, the Iranians seem to have halted further development in favor of hardening the location to face up to future bombing — however may resume work at any time.
The US and Israel have flagged Pickaxe as a possible future enrichment and weaponization website, and studies counsel it’s a hiding place for uranium-enrichment centrifuges that survived the 2025 strikes.
Whereas the advanced could also be past the attain of the Large Ordnance Penetrator bunker-busters used on the Fordow and Natanz enrichment websites, both a MOAB or Tomahawk missiles may block Iranian entry to Pickaxe and permit for higher monitoring of the regime’s work there.
To forestall Tehran from additional restoration efforts, strikes on all these websites should stay on the desk.
US and Israeli strikes have already denied Iran a prepared nuclear-weapons gasoline supply — the toughest and slowest a part of constructing an arsenal.
Some 9,000 kilograms of enriched uranium, sufficient to finally produce roughly 22 weapons, stays entombed or inaccessible.
However the present pause isn’t sustainable if Iran can rebuild what earlier campaigns degraded.
A coherent coverage should transcend disrupting reconstruction.
It requires a sustained US naval blockade and financial strain to starve Tehran’s army budgets, plus covert operations that focus on scientific networks and nuclear procurement chains.
Washington should additionally area next-generation bunker-busters able to reaching websites like Pickaxe Mountain, and work with Israel on strategies resembling subterranean drills that may collapse tunnel complexes from above.
And the Pentagon should proceed getting ready to defend Saudi oil services from Iranian counter-strikes — which Tehran has already threatened in response to any US or Israeli motion towards Pickaxe.
In the end, the Islamic Republic received’t cease searching for the bomb till the regime itself ends.
To really terminate this dire risk, america and Israel ought to stand able to help the Iranian individuals within the overthrow of their oppressors.
Andrea Stricker is deputy director of the nonproliferation program and a analysis fellow on the Basis for Protection of Democracies.
