CENTCOM Just Completed an 11th Night of Strikes on Iran — Trump Says a Never-Hit Nuclear Site Is Next.
U.S. Central Command says it has completed an 11th consecutive night of strikes on Iran — the campaign that, as this site reported after the Jordan airbase attack, has already pushed the war’s American death toll to 17. This round hit a familiar target set: military operations centers, maritime capabilities, aircraft hangars, drone storage facilities, and logistics infrastructure.
What’s new is the target President Trump (R) is now naming out loud: Pickaxe Mountain, an underground Iranian nuclear facility that survived the original June 2025 bunker-buster strikes on Fordow and Natanz untouched — and that Israeli intelligence now says Iran has been quietly filling with centrifuges ever since.
Iran, for its part, says there is nothing there to hit. Both claims are below, sourced separately, because neither has been independently verified.
- 11th night — of consecutive U.S. strikes on Iran, completed 8:15pm ET July 21 after a roughly 75-minute operation — CENTCOM
- 100+ meters — of rock and earth Pickaxe Mountain is buried beneath, per multiple outlets citing U.S. and Israeli assessments
- $37,500,000,000 — the war's actual cost to date, per Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's July 21 Senate testimony
- $87,600,000,000 — the new emergency funding request before Congress — a separate, not-yet-spent figure
- 30+ vessels — Iran has attacked in the Strait of Hormuz over the past three months, per CENTCOM
CENTCOM began the strikes at 7pm ET on July 21 and declared them complete at 8:15pm ET — an operation lasting roughly 75 minutes, its 11th straight night without a pause since the campaign resumed. The command said U.S. assets targeted “Iranian military operations centers, maritime capabilities, aircraft hangars, drone storage facilities, and military logistics infrastructure,” language nearly identical to the target description behind the tenth night this site covered two days earlier.
CENTCOM forces began striking military targets in Iran at 7 p.m. ET today for the 11th consecutive night. The strikes are designed to continue degrading Iran's ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
Explosions were reported in Sirik and Tabriz, with Iranian state media adding Bushehr and Bandar Abbas to the list of cities where blasts were heard overnight. CENTCOM said the underlying justification remains the same one it has cited for weeks: Iran has attacked more than 30 commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz over the past three months, and the strikes are meant to keep degrading Tehran’s capacity to keep doing it.
Iran calls it Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La; Kolang translates roughly to “pickaxe,” and the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities have adopted the English nickname. The site sits about a mile south of Natanz — the enrichment complex the U.S. and Israel bombed in June 2025 alongside Fordow and Isfahan — roughly 140 miles south of Tehran in Isfahan province. Construction began in 2020, and Iran formally declared the site to the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2021 as a future centrifuge-assembly facility, not a declared enrichment site.
What makes it different from Fordow and Natanz is depth and timing: the facility is buried at least 100 meters — roughly 328 feet — under solid rock, deeper than the bunkers the U.S. hit with Massive Ordnance Penetrators in 2025, and it was deliberately left untouched during that round and every round since. The Wall Street Journal reported this week, citing Israeli intelligence, that Iran moved thousands of uranium-enrichment centrifuges into Pickaxe Mountain’s tunnels last fall — after the original strikes, not before them. No IAEA inspector has ever been permitted inside to confirm what the tunnels actually contain.
“Iran publicly announced its intention to have nuclear activity at Pickaxe Mountain as part of their quite systematic intention to put their most sensitive facilities underground.”
Rafael Grossi · Director-General, International Atomic Energy Agency
Trump first named Pickaxe Mountain as a target on Monday, July 13, in a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt. “We’re going to take out Pickaxe Mountain,” he said, telling Hewitt to relay a warning to Tehran: “Tell them we’re coming, and there’s nothing they can do about it.” He added that Pickaxe was “a possible target for a nice, big, fat shot right in the front door,” while also acknowledging uncertainty about what was actually inside: “we see no activity there.”
He repeated the threat eight days later, on Tuesday, July 21, in the Oval Office — this time with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun seated beside him for an unrelated meeting on Lebanon’s security posture. “We’ll be hitting that area very probably pretty soon, and there’s not a thing they can do about it,” Trump said, before adding a line that read as a deliberate departure from his usual caution: “We’ll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily. Normally I wouldn’t say that. If I thought they could do something about it, I would never say that.”
A verified Trump post on Truth Social specifically referencing Pickaxe Mountain did not surface in our research; this piece does not cite one rather than guess at a postId. What is confirmed, twice, in his own words eight days apart, is the target and the tone — escalating from a radio aside to an on-camera threat delivered with a foreign head of state in the room.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry answered on July 22, less than a day after Trump’s Oval Office remarks. Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei posted a flat denial that any nuclear work is happening at the site at all.
Washington's obsessive focus on Kolang Kouh (Pickaxe Mountain) where no nuclear activity is taking place is nothing more than a fabricated pretext for aggression, destruction, and sabotage.
That is a direct rebuttal, not a hedge: Iran is not disputing the intelligence characterization or asking for more time to explain — it is asserting outright that Washington’s stated reason for a strike is invented. Neither side’s claim is independently verifiable from the outside; this piece presents Trump’s threat and Baghaei’s denial as exactly what they are, competing public statements from the two governments involved.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking the same day at the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conference in Manila, said Washington remains open to negotiating but doesn’t believe Tehran means it.
“The problem we're having right now is that they're not serious about talks. If they're serious, we're serious.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio · ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conference, Manila
Rubio added that if Iran continues to resist, the U.S. “will do what’s necessary to protect our interests and also the interests of our allies” — language that keeps the door to talks technically open while giving Trump’s Pickaxe Mountain threat diplomatic cover rather than contradicting it.
President Trump (R) — threatened Pickaxe Mountain on July 13 and again on July 21, the second time in the Oval Office with Lebanon’s president present.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio — said Iran is “not serious about talks” at the July 22 ASEAN conference in Manila, while affirming the U.S. remains open to negotiating.
Esmail Baghaei — Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson; denied any nuclear activity at Pickaxe Mountain and called U.S. focus on the site a “fabricated pretext.”
Rafael Grossi — IAEA Director-General; has said Iran systematically moves its most sensitive nuclear work underground, without confirming what is currently inside Pickaxe Mountain.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth & Gen. Dan Caine — testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee on July 21 defending both the war’s cost to date and the new funding request.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) — the panel’s top Democrat, pressed Hegseth and Caine on the absence of a clear exit strategy and on tens of billions in still-unspent prior funding.
The same day Trump renewed his Pickaxe Mountain threat, his defense secretary was on Capitol Hill explaining what the war has cost so far — and asking for more. Hegseth told the Senate Appropriations Committee the war’s actual cost to date stands at $37,500,000,000, up from roughly $29,000,000,000 in mid-May. That is money already spent.
Separately, Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine defended a new $87,600,000,000 emergency funding request — a package that also covers farm aid and other non-defense costs — of which $67,100,000,000 is earmarked specifically for the Pentagon’s Iran-war expenses through the end of September. That figure is a request, not a bill already paid, and this piece keeps the two numbers separate rather than folding a spending ask into an already-incurred cost. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the committee’s top Democrat, pushed back, questioning the absence of a clear exit strategy and noting tens of billions from earlier funding packages remain unspent.
CENTCOM has now struck Iran for 11 consecutive nights, and Trump has twice named a specific new target: Pickaxe Mountain, a nuclear facility left untouched since the war began and, per Israeli intelligence, quietly filling with centrifuges since last fall. Iran flatly denies there is anything there to hit. Rubio says Tehran isn’t serious about ending the fight diplomatically. And the bill for the war so far — $37,500,000,000, with an $87,600,000,000request now before Congress — keeps climbing regardless of which side is telling the truth about what’s buried under that mountain.
