Pakistani Proposal: Iran Gets Cash in Return for IAEA Inspections That Apparently Exclude Strategic Pickaxe Mountain Facility
By Dr. Aaron Lerner | Israel Behind the News | October 22, 2026
While President Donald Trump has recently discussed the possibility of bombing Iran’s strategic underground Pickaxe Mountain facility near Natanz, a Pakistani-Qatari proposal reported today, 20 October, offers Iran financial relief involving $6 billion in frozen funds in exchange for inspections of nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The proposal apparently does not include inspections of Pickaxe Mountain, a massive underground complex associated with the manufacture and assembly of uranium-enrichment equipment.
Pickaxe Mountain has not had the status of a “nuclear facility” for inspection because Iran claims that while they openly manufacture enrichment equipment at Pickaxe Mountain that they don’t operate the equipment there.
Had Iran agreed to IAEA inspections of Pickaxe Mountain, this would have represented a significant Iranian concession and a major diplomatic achievement for the Trump administration.
Such a breakthrough would have certainly been prominently highlighted in reporting about the proposal.
The absence of any mention of Pickaxe Mountain is therefore a strong indication that the facility has not been added to the locations covered by the proposed inspections.
This omission is particularly troubling because serious American nuclear experts have raised the possibility that Pickaxe Mountain could be used not merely to manufacture enrichment equipment but to conduct uranium enrichment itself.
In a 9 September, 2026, analysis, Joseph Rodgers, Douglas Comstock, and Joseph S. Bermudez Jr. of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) identified the possibility that Iran was developing Pickaxe Mountain into an underground uranium-enrichment facility.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/satellite-imagery-pickaxe-mountain
Thus, while there is no public confirmation that uranium enrichment is already taking place at Pickaxe Mountain, there are serious concerns about its potential role in rebuilding Iran’s enrichment capabilities.
The proposed arrangement could therefore provide Iran with financial relief while leaving a strategically important underground facility outside the inspection regime.
The published terms also provide no indication that Iran would be required to halt its ballistic missile production or broader military reconstruction.
Is this insanity?
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Sounds like they think they are dealing with Obama and Lurch all over again.
Iran needs to realise they are at an existential point.
Sounds like they think they are dealing with Obama and Lurch all over again.
They need to realize they ar1