U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday renewed his threat to strike Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain nuclear site, saying Washington could act “very soon” if it detects renewed activity there.
“We may hit Pickaxe Mountain very soon… if there is anything going on with Pickaxe,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Donald Trump
(Photo: Kent NISHIMURA / AFP)
Trump has threatened for months to strike the site, saying as early as July that the United States could attack it soon.
Trump said the U.S. is closely monitoring activity across Iran and would respond forcefully to any developments it views as threatening. “We know about everything that moves everywhere throughout Iran,” Trump said. “And if something goes wrong, we hit them and we hit them hard.”
He added that Iran would not obtain a nuclear weapon, saying the United States had prevented that from happening.
Trump also rejected describing the confrontation with Iran as a war, instead calling it a “military conflict.”
“It’s not a big deal. It’s small money for us,” he said.
Trump said the United States had lost 18 people in the confrontation, contrasting that toll with far larger U.S. losses in previous wars. “We lost 18 people, but in Vietnam you lost 100,000 people, and in other conflicts you lost tens of thousands of people,” he said. “We do strikes intermittently. It’s not a war.”