Iran Caught Building Underground Nuclear Facility While Negotiating With US

Peloni:  Iran is doing that Iran thing again.  No surprises as this should have been expected by everyone.  The question remains as to how Trump will respond.  So we will see.

Valerie Locke | Israel365 | July 6, 2026

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Satellite imagery reviewed by a Washington nuclear watchdog shows continued construction at Iran’s most secretive nuclear site even as Tehran sits across the table from American negotiators, raising the question of whether the regime is preparing a hedge against the very diplomacy it claims to be pursuing in good faith.

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) reported that Iran’s underground Pickaxe Mountain complex, buried inside the Zagros Mountains near Natanz, remains under active construction, and that the International Atomic Energy Agency has never once been permitted to inspect it. The assessment, based on imagery captured in late June, comes as the Trump administration works to implement the memorandum of understanding reached with Iran following Operation Epic Fury, the joint US-Israeli military campaign launched February 28 against Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure.

According to ISIS, the late-June photographs show vehicles entering the western tunnel portals at Pickaxe Mountain along with fresh fortification work at the entrances, indicating that construction inside the mountain has not stopped. The institute argues that this activity is incompatible with the memorandum of understanding, which is meant to require Iran to preserve the status quo at nuclear-related sites until inspection and verification measures are completed.

Spencer Faragasso, an ISIS senior fellow who tracks Iran’s nuclear program, wrote on X that the project appears designed to give Tehran <cite index=”0-8?>”a hedge by Iran in case negotiations fail”</cite>, leaving the regime with a nuclear facility already in an advanced stage of construction should talks collapse. Faragasso said Iran could prove its sincerity by freezing work at the site and opening it to inspectors, a step the regime has so far refused to take.

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