Iran hands out iodine tablets as Trump draws crosshairs on Pickaxe Mountain

Iran's government is distributing iodine tablets to communities near its nuclear facilities, a health ministry official confirmed to The Times, as Tehran braces for a US attack on the Pickaxe Mountain site that Donald Trump has promised could come within ten minutes.

The confirmation came days after Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that "one or two sites" remain that need to be dealt with, "including Pickaxe Mountain. We can do it in ten minutes. We have a plan for it, and we can execute it very quickly." He added that Iran cannot do anything regarding its nuclear program without approval from Washington.

An official civil defence video examined by The Times instructs citizens how to survive a nuclear explosion at the site, which lies roughly 17 miles from Natanz, 25 miles from Kashan, 117 miles from Isfahan and 223 miles from Tehran. The video's three instructions are simple: get inside, stay inside and listen for updates. It warns that an attack on the underground facility could throw radioactive earth and rock into the atmosphere, with winds carrying contaminated dust for hundreds of miles. People near the site may have ten to 15 minutes before fallout arrives.

"Yes, we are distributing iodine," the health ministry official said. "During every war, we have tried to distribute it within a two-to-three-kilometre radius of nuclear facilities."

The regime's own arithmetic explains the precaution. Pickaxe Mountain's nuclear facilities lie 80 to 100 meters underground — deep enough that the most powerful conventional US bunker-busting bombs may not reach them. Analysts note that, unlike Fordow with its obvious cooling vents, the site has perhaps one obvious weak point. A B61-11 nuclear bunker buster could destroy the facility; whether Trump would cross that line to close the last sites is the question now priced into every capital watching the region.

The timing is Washington's, not Tehran's. The midterm elections delivered a Democratic sweep this week, a result Trump has himself framed as the cost of the war, and his response has been to prepare more of it — telling reporters he would soon decide whether to resume military operations while negotiators review a proposal from regional mediators. "It doesn't make any difference what they're looking at," he said of the talks. "They're not going to have a nuclear weapon; they know that. So do I."

The health ministry official put the regime's assessment more bluntly: "Trump can no longer be trusted. He may go through with this crime."

Less lethal options remain on the menu — a cyberattack on Kharg Island, Iran's oil export hub, is one route the administration could take short of bombing. But the tablets are already moving to the villages.