PALM BEACH, Florida — President Donald Trump said on Saturday evening that the United States still has one or two targets left to deal with in Iran, naming a suspected underground site known as Pickaxe Mountain, and said American forces could act within minutes if he gave the order. The remarks, made to reporters at a Halloween party at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, arrived on the same day his secretary of state said no decision had been made on new strikes and that diplomacy remained the president’s preference.
The contrast between the two messages is the story. Trump spoke in the language of capability and speed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking earlier on Saturday in Atlanta, spoke in the language of restraint and unfinished talks. Neither man announced a strike, a deadline, or a new negotiating proposal. Together, their comments leave the central question open two days before the November 3 midterm elections: whether the next phase of the confrontation with Iran will be settled at a table or resumed on a battlefield.
What Trump Said About Pickaxe Mountain in Iran
Trump told reporters that much of Iran’s military and nuclear program had already been damaged. “We’ve knocked out their nuclear,” he said. “We still have to take care of, I would say one or two sites, but we can do that in 10 minutes.” He then pointed to one site in particular. “You probably could look at Pickaxe Mountain, and you have to take care of that. We can do that all very quickly,” he added.
Those short sentences carry several distinct claims, and they should be separated rather than treated as a single announcement. First, Trump claimed that earlier American action had already removed most of the threat. Second, he identified a small remainder — one or two sites — rather than a broad new campaign. Third, he singled out Pickaxe Mountain, a site Western intelligence agencies have flagged as a suspected underground location that may be used to store nuclear material. Fourth, he framed any future action as fast and limited, not as a prolonged operation.
The Iranian government has denied that any nuclear work is carried out at Pickaxe Mountain. That denial matters because the public record on the site is thin. It has been described in reporting as a suspected underground nuclear complex that has not been struck in the current conflict, unlike better-known Iranian facilities. It has not been presented in the material reviewed for this article as a site whose function has been independently confirmed by international inspectors with full access. Readers should therefore treat the description of Pickaxe Mountain as a suspected site, not as a settled fact about what is inside it.
Trump also repeated a long-standing position: Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. He said Tehran wanted to make a deal, but he questioned whether its commitments could be trusted. Negotiations, he said, were “going fine” but Tehran was “not very reliable” and had a habit of making a deal and then backing out. That phrasing is important. It allows Trump to keep two arguments alive at once: that talks are progressing, and that pressure must remain because talks alone cannot be trusted.
Rubio Says Trump Prefers Diplomacy and Has Made No Decision
Hours before Trump spoke in Florida, Rubio spoke in Atlanta at the end of a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 20 countries. His message was deliberately narrower than the president’s. Rubio said Trump had not made a decision about fresh strikes on Iran and that the United States would be open to a diplomatic solution.
“We can achieve military objectives if we seek to. He hasn’t made a decision. I have no announcement in that regard with you today, and nor do we take any of it lightly,” Rubio told reporters. He added that Trump would prefer to solve the matter diplomatically, and suggested that if military force had been his first choice, it would already have been used.
Rubio also described the state of contact with Iran in terms that cut against the idea of a frozen standoff. He said talks had never fully stopped, that they had continued through several channels, including intermediaries and in some cases direct conversations, and that Qatari-backed contacts were part of that picture. He declined to assess how far those talks had advanced and declined to set a deadline for them to succeed.
That refusal to give a timetable is itself significant. A deadline would create a clear trigger for action and a clear test for failure. By avoiding one, the administration keeps flexibility. It can continue to say diplomacy is alive without committing to how long it will wait, and it can continue to warn of military action without committing to when that action would begin.
Rubio set out what Washington would require from any agreement. He said it would have to address American security concerns, above all preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and confronting what the United States describes as Iran’s support for armed groups across the Middle East. He also linked the confrontation to commercial shipping, alleging that Iran had targeted vessels carrying energy supplies and other cargo, including ships with Indian sailors aboard. That allegation is Rubio’s characterization; the material reviewed for this article did not include an Iranian response to that specific shipping claim, and it should be read as an American accusation rather than an established finding.
Why the Timing Matters Two Days Before the Midterms
The calendar explains part of the tension in the messaging. The midterm elections are on November 3, and Trump has previously warned that fresh military action could come after the vote. He has also said he was weighing whether to “finish them off,” a phrase that has kept speculation alive without amounting to an order.
Reporting on Saturday added two further elements that remain unconfirmed by the White House in the material reviewed here. The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the conversation, that Trump spoke by telephone on Saturday morning with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the United States prepared plans to resume strikes on Iran. Separately, reporting cited senior Gulf Arab officials as saying Washington had warned Gulf allies to prepare for a possible new round of strikes as early as November 4, the day after the midterms. Those reports describe preparation and warning, not a decision, and they should not be read as proof that strikes are scheduled. The White House has not, in the reporting reviewed for this article, confirmed a date for renewed action.
Iran’s supreme leader also warned on Saturday against launching new attacks, after threats that strikes could resume following elections. Iran’s top security official, Mohsen Rezaei, was quoted as saying no new decision had been made regarding changes to Iran’s nuclear doctrine, while acknowledging discussion of what doctrine would apply if war broke out again. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was separately reported as saying a new proposal could fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz within two days. Those statements, taken together, suggest Tehran is also trying to shape the period after the election — warning against attack, floating a shipping proposal, and leaving its own doctrine formally unchanged for now.
The result is a familiar pattern in this conflict: public warnings, private-sounding reports of planning, and an open diplomatic channel, all operating at the same time. None of those elements alone proves what will happen next. Their combination is designed, at least in part, to pressure the other side while keeping options open at home.
What Pickaxe Mountain Represents in the Larger Conflict
To understand why one mountain site drew the president’s attention, it helps to place it in the wider war that the United States and Israel began at the end of February. That campaign targeted Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure, and Trump now claims it knocked out Iran’s navy, air force, air defenses, much of its military equipment and manufacturing capacity, and its nuclear program. Those are sweeping claims, and they are the president’s assessment of the campaign’s effect, not an independently verified inventory of what remains.
If that assessment were taken at face value, Pickaxe Mountain would be an exception — a remainder rather than a core. That framing serves a political purpose. It presents any future strike as a finishing step, not a new war. It also presents diplomacy as the preferred route to the same end, because the hardest work, in this telling, is already done.
The risk of that framing is that it can understate what a strike on a hardened underground site would involve. Underground facilities are, by design, difficult to assess from the outside and difficult to destroy with certainty. Western intelligence assessments that a site may store nuclear material are not the same as confirmation of what is stored there, how much exists, or whether a strike would remove it permanently. The International Atomic Energy Agency has previously reported difficulties verifying the condition of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and the status of its nuclear material after strikes, citing restricted access. That verification gap is one reason the debate over Pickaxe Mountain is as much about intelligence and inspection as it is about military capability.
There is also a regional dimension that goes beyond one site. The Strait of Hormuz carries about a fifth of global oil shipments, and any renewed fighting near it would affect energy markets, shipping insurance, and allied economies far beyond Iran and the United States. That is why Rubio’s comments about shipping, and Araghchi’s reported proposal on reopening the strait, matter even when they sound like side issues. Control of, and safe passage through, that waterway is one of the concrete interests at stake in the negotiation, alongside the nuclear question.
Diplomacy, Deterrence, and the Space Between Them
It is tempting to read Trump’s “10 minutes” remark as a threat and Rubio’s “no decision” remark as a correction, but that reading may be too simple. In negotiations involving military pressure, a threat and a denial of a decision can work together. The threat tells the other side that delay has a cost. The denial tells allies, voters, and the other side that the door to talks is still open. Both messages can be true at the same time: the capability may exist, the preference may be diplomatic, and the decision may genuinely not have been made.
What is missing from the public record is any detail that would let outsiders judge which track is winning. There is no published draft agreement, no announced meeting between Trump and Iranian leaders, and no stated American red line with a date attached. There are intermediaries, direct conversations in some cases, and a stated openness to a deal that addresses nuclear weapons and regional armed groups. There is also a stated willingness to use force if that deal does not emerge. The space between those two positions is where the next days will be decided.
For American voters, the timing adds another layer. A president speaking about military action two days before an election is speaking to two audiences: Tehran, and the electorate. The claim that the United States is “not in that much of a hurry” because Iran’s military has already been degraded is, in that sense, both a strategic statement and a political one. It reassures voters that a new war is not imminent while preserving the option of action after they vote. Whether voters hear reassurance or warning will depend on how they weigh the president’s record of following through on similar warnings.
For Iran’s leaders, the calculation is different. A warning that strikes could resume after the election, combined with reports of planning with Israel and warnings to Gulf allies, raises the cost of waiting. At the same time, Rubio’s statement that no decision has been made, and that diplomacy is preferred, gives Tehran a reason to keep talking rather than prepare only for war. The supreme leader’s warning against new attacks, and the reported Hormuz proposal, suggest Tehran is responding to both signals — deterring attack while offering a limited opening.
What to Watch Next
Several markers will clarify the direction in the coming days. The first is whether the White House issues any formal statement after the election, or whether Trump repeats the ‘one or two sites’ language in a more formal setting than a party conversation with reporters. The second is whether Rubio or another senior official gives a more specific account of the talks, including who is mediating and what, if anything, has been agreed in principle. The third is whether Israel’s government makes its own public statement about timing, since any renewed campaign would likely involve close coordination with Jerusalem. The fourth is whether Gulf allies confirm or deny that they have been warned to prepare, since their statements often reveal more about planning than Washington’s own.
Until one of those markers moves, the honest summary of Saturday’s events is narrow but important. Trump named a site and a timeframe for action. Rubio said no decision on action had been made and that diplomacy was preferred. Iran denied nuclear work at the named site and warned against new attacks. Talks, according to Rubio, have continued through multiple channels. Everything beyond that — dates, targets, and outcomes — remains reported, alleged, or undecided, not announced.
That uncertainty is not a failure of reporting. It is the current state of American policy as described by its own senior officials on the same day. Trump and Rubio did not contradict each other on the facts of a decision, because Rubio said there was no decision to contradict. They differed in emphasis: the president emphasized what American power could still do quickly, and his secretary of state emphasized what American diplomacy could still achieve without it. Which emphasis becomes policy will be decided not by Saturday’s remarks, but by what happens after the votes are counted.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from The Straits Times, Free Malaysia Today and The Times of India.