Reports that the US could use a nuclear weapon on Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain site have no basis, and the attack Washington has actually floated would be a staged show with no destructive effect, according to former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter.
Professor Mohammad Marandi also doubts the US would use such a weapon, and says Iran’s forces remain on full alert for a possible return to war within days, with the Strait of Hormuz shut until the MOU is implemented. Ritter, for his part, sees Washington searching for a way out.
Both guests spoke on Al Mayadeen’s The Grand Standoff: Iran and the World on Tuesday, covering the deadlock over the MOU, Iran’s preparations for a new round of war, and the US retreat from Gulf bases.
They also discussed the global energy and economic fallout of any strike on infrastructure, Iran’s growing missile and drone reach, and the nuclear claims surrounding Pickaxe Mountain.
Pickaxe Mountain and the nuclear claims
The Tucker Carlson report behind the nuclear speculation quotes a single “informed observer,” which Ritter called “not a very good source.”
The US is following the “Operation Midnight Hammer” script, he argued, when, by his account, Washington reached out to Tehran beforehand and agreed on a tit-for-tat in which the US would bomb Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, Iran would answer with missiles, and both sides would call it quits. This time, he claimed, the US has signaled that it wants to drop a “mother of all bombs” on Pickaxe Mountain, knowing it would do no damage, making it “purely a sound and light show,” and Iran apparently refused.
Staging such a show would mean Washington knows there is no weapons program to destroy, Ritter reasoned. Gadi Eisenkot, the former Israeli chief of staff who ran against Benjamin Netanyahu in the latest elections, has said on national TV that Iran has neither a bomb nor a program, Ritter added, and the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei remains in force. “Talk of using nuclear weapons is irresponsible in the extreme,” he stressed.
Marandi likewise doubts the US would cross that line, since a nuclear attack would push states across Latin America, Africa and Asia to build their own weapons. Iran would be well placed to respond if it came to that, he noted. It can enrich uranium in a space of 50 to 100 square meters, makes all its centrifuges at home, and has countless underground bases, with no IAEA inspectors in the country since the 12-Day War.
Tehran has no intention for now of changing its nuclear posture, but that would change at once if the US did something “extraordinarily stupid and genocidal,” Marandi said, adding that Iran is preparing for every scenario while remaining in the NPT and keeping the fatwa for the time being.
War or withdrawal?
Talks are deadlocked because Trump has shown no desire to implement the MOU he signed, Marandi argued. Iran has agreed to “sugarcoat” the deal and shorten its timeline, though not to alter its substance, and it has held that line for months.
Iran’s working assumption is that war is coming. Armed forces remain on full alert during the negotiations, and “it could be tonight, it could be tomorrow night, it could be next week,” Marandi warned, adding that “major combat” could be reported, “in the coming hours or the coming days.”
The next round will differ from the opening phase, he reiterated, since “this time around it’s not going to be like the first 40 days of the war.” Iran will hit harder, at targets more painful for the US, and keep striking until it meets its objectives. Tehran has also said it will respond immediately if it sees clear signs of an imminent attack, and a first strike would be legitimate because no ceasefire exists, he added.
Ritter reads Washington’s intentions the other way. The Trump administration is looking for what Iran’s parliament speaker called “an elegant face-saving mechanism” for pulling out of the region, he argued, because “right now the United States has been defeated by Iran.”
The defeat is regional and strategic, he said, and the US will not return to its bases in Bahrain, Kuwait or Al Udeid. He backs continued negotiations, saying it is “better for old men to talk, talk, talk than young men to shoot, shoot, shoot.”
Both guests sketched an exit. Marandi counts four options for Trump, namely renewed aggression that would meet massive retaliation, walking away, carrying on as now while Iran tightens the noose on Hormuz, or implementing the MOU, which he called the smartest. “That is for Trump to decide,” he said.
Energy, Hormuz and the US retreat
A US attack on Iran’s energy infrastructure would be catastrophic for the world economy, in the view of both guests.
Iran would respond against infrastructure in every country that took part in the war, Marandi said, which he expects would eventually topple those governments and the global economy. About 25% of the world’s energy resources would be lost, Ritter added, noting that the White House briefings he knows of are not optimistic about a tit-for-tat over energy facilities, with the exception of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the Commerce Secretary.
Hormuz is already a heavy blow to global energy security, Ritter pointed out. It will not reopen even if the US walks away, Marandi stressed, as “the Strait of Hormuz will only be normalized when the MOU commitments are fulfilled.”
The US has been pushed back across the region, they added. Iran destroyed US bases around the Gulf in the first 40 days of the war and then assets in Jordan, Marandi recalled, forcing Washington to lean on “Israel” and Europe. A meeting of Saudi, Pakistani and Turkish military officials in Iran shows the US security umbrella over the Gulf no longer exists, Ritter argued, and a vacuum has opened.
The Treasury’s theory that an attack on Iran’s economy could topple the system is “wishful thinking,” according to Ritter. Much of Iran’s economy now runs through gray and black channels that Washington does not understand, so it cannot plan an attack to collapse it. The contest is a “race to the bottom,” he said, in which the US economy may hit bottom first, with no energy reserves to cushion it.
Drones and deterrence
Iran’s missile and space programs let it extend its reach well beyond West Asia, Marandi noted. A recent tour of an underground production line showed the Arash drone, now carrying a heavier payload. Drones launched from ships or other countries could hit US assets far outside the region, and the message to Washington is that “nowhere is safe anymore.”
Ritter cautioned that Iran would do better to present itself as a guarantor of post-conflict stability than as a power that can strike anywhere, because the latter would recast it as a global threat in the US. A strike on the continental US or an American territory would draw a response Iran could not match, he said. He added that Washington lacks the ability to project power into Iran, and that stirring up Kurdish, Baluch or Azeri unrest would only unify the country further.
Marandi placed the blame for any new round on Trump and Netanyahu, predicting that “US proxies” in the region would collapse. Ritter tied the stakes to Putin’s remark that the world is moving from US singularity to multipolarity, noting that a war with Iran would leave the US poorly placed to manage that shift.
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