Trump is the President of the USA with 1,770 nuclear weapons ready to go at his command, and more in reserve. Pickaxe Mountain is in Iran and might or might not be the hiding place of Iran’s stock of enriched uranium, which might or might not be for making Iran’s own nuclear deterrent.
Obama made a deal with Iran on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015 under which Iran would not develop nuclear weapons in exchange for lifting of economic sanctions. Trump tore up the JCPOA in 2018, and in July 2019 Iran restarted its uranium enrichment programme.
Trump bombed the places connected with the Iranian nuclear programme in 2025, and announced to the world that he had obliterated it.
Trump started bombing Iran in February 2026 in Operation Epic (aka Epstein) Fury with the objective of destroying Iran’s military capabilities. After 40 days of bombing, the US announced that its goals were accomplished. After 183 days of bombing and escalating destructive violence throughout the Middle East, Trump is clearly bogged down. His objective now seems to be to destroy Iran’s enriched uranium by bombing its putative hiding place, Pickaxe Mountain.
The uranium is stored too deep for Trump’s bunker busting bombs to reach it, so the question for him is, would a nuclear bomb be able to crack the mountain?
Marjorie Taylor Greene, and ex-devotee of Trump, announced on the 17 August 2026 that she had heard on good authority that Trump was discussing in Cabinet that possibility of using a nuclear bomb in Iran. Greene is not a reliable witness, being a believer in several conspiracy theories.
I asked ChatGPT “Is it true that in his briefings before taking up the Presidency, Trump asked why the US did not use its nuclear weapons to solve several crises?”
Here is the answer:
This was the answer: “In August 2016, during the presidential campaign and before Trump took office, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough reported that an unnamed “foreign policy expert of international level” had briefed Trump earlier that year. According to Scarborough, Trump asked three times during the same briefing, essentially: “If we have them, why can’t we use [nuclear weapons]?”
However, this was never independently established as fact. Trump’s campaign explicitly denied the allegation, saying there was “no truth to this.” Scarborough did not publicly identify the expert or provide documentary evidence establishing exactly what was said”.
Well, Trump’s campaign would deny, wouldn’t they? And Scarborough’s informant would want to remain anonymous. So we have no firm evidence of Trump’s intentions regarding nuclear weapons, although he has said that he would be “very, very slow to use them”.
However, Trump’s personality is such that he is quite capable of using a nuclear weapon.
If Trump did explode a nuke to try to collapse Iran’s store of enriched uranium, it would set a very dangerous precedent. It is highly likely that Putin would use it as an excuse to drop one on Ukraine. The nuclear genie would be out of the bottle, and the nuclear deterrence strategy is, unfortunately, not infallible.
We must hope that the EU and UK are making this point to Washington.
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