“It’s a necessity more important than bread.”

That’s how Iran’s rulers regard their drive to acquire nuclear weapons, an activist hard-liner recently declared.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s surprise visit to Israel this week, leaks about US and Israeli military preparations, and remarks by President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggest Washington and Jerusalem are seriously weighing fresh strikes on Iran — largely to disrupt a nuclear rebuild that Tehran is now openly admitting.

The regime’s unbending pursuit of nuclear weapons and its refusal to make peace remind us why it’s so dangerous — and why a new, limited round of military strikes may be necessary.

One option reportedly under discussion: dropping the largest conventional bomb in the US arsenal, the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb — the “mother of all bombs” — to destroy access to Iran’s deeply buried Pickaxe Mountain complex.

Trump said last week he may have to strike the site, because any Iranian push for nuclear weapons is intolerable.

“They would use it,” he warned.

US and Israeli strikes in 2025 and 2026 set Iran’s nuclear program back by more than two years.

Now the Islamic Republic is attempting to make up for lost time by rebuilding its nuclear-weapons option underground.

In addition to Pickaxe, Tehran is openly reconstituting its program at several sites that should top the US target lists.

At Minzadehei, a facility where a key nuclear component was manufactured, the Institute for Science and International Security spotted rapid rebuilding activity in satellite images from September and October.

Israeli forces struck and all but destroyed the site back in March.

A parallel reconstruction effort is underway at Taleghan 2, an above-ground bunker long linked by the International Atomic Energy Agency with high-explosive work and warhead experiments.

Israel hit Taleghan 2 in October 2024 and again in March 2026, after an earlier rebuild restored a high-explosive containment vessel.

Repair work resumed in June: Iran has capped penetration holes where bombs hit, added concrete blast protection, reinforced the structure, and has hidden further activity under tarps while construction equipment operates.

Further rebuilding is occurring at Shahid Boroujerdi, another tunnel complex linked to past work on uranium metal for nuclear-weapon cores.

This week the Foreign Policy Research Institute identified new construction activity there, as well as the presence of shipping containers.

As of September, Iran was also repairing buildings at Malek Ashtar University, which Israel struck this year to halt the regime’s nuclear-weaponization work there.  

Whether Iran is pursuing salvage or reconstitution efforts, the pace of work at these sites should raise alarm.

At Pickaxe Mountain, the 300-foot-deep tunnel complex south of Natanz, the Iranians appear to have halted additional construction in favor of hardening the site to withstand future bombing — but could resume work at any time.

The US and Israel have flagged Pickaxe as a potential future enrichment and weaponization site, and reports suggest it’s a hiding place for uranium-enrichment centrifuges that survived the 2025 strikes.

While the complex may be beyond the reach of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-busters used at the Fordow and Natanz enrichment sites, either a MOAB or Tomahawk missiles could block Iranian access to Pickaxe and allow for better monitoring of the regime’s work there.

To prevent Tehran from further recovery efforts, strikes on all these sites must remain on the table.

US and Israeli strikes have already denied Iran a ready nuclear-weapons fuel source — the hardest and slowest part of building an arsenal.

Some 9,000 kilograms of enriched uranium, enough to eventually produce roughly 22 weapons, remains entombed or inaccessible.

But the current pause isn’t sustainable if Iran can rebuild what previous campaigns degraded.

A coherent policy must go beyond disrupting reconstruction.

It requires a sustained US naval blockade and economic pressure to starve Tehran’s military budgets, plus covert operations that target scientific networks and nuclear procurement chains.

Washington must also field next-generation bunker-busters capable of reaching sites like Pickaxe Mountain, and work with Israel on methods such as subterranean drills that can collapse tunnel complexes from above.

And the Pentagon must continue preparing to defend Saudi oil facilities from Iranian counter-strikes — which Tehran has already threatened in response to any US or Israeli action against Pickaxe.

Ultimately, the Islamic Republic won’t stop seeking the bomb until the regime itself ends.

To truly terminate this dire threat, the United States and Israel should stand ready to support the Iranian people in the overthrow of their oppressors.

Andrea Stricker is deputy director of the nonproliferation program and a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.