The White House was back at the center of high-stakes diplomacy this week as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat down with President Donald J. Trump to go over sensitive intelligence on one of Iran’s most closely guarded secrets — a deeply buried nuclear site known as Pickaxe Mountain. The meeting, held alongside a tribute to the late Senator Lindsey Graham, zeroed in on the fortified facility sitting adjacent to Iran’s Natanz nuclear complex, carved into granite rock and built to withstand exactly the kind of pressure Washington has been applying.

That pressure has been building for weeks. A 13-day American air campaign against Iranian targets appears to have done what years of cautious diplomacy couldn’t — it pushed Tehran back to the table. Iran requested a pause in the strikes and has been working through regional intermediaries, including Oman, to keep talks alive. But the message coming out of Washington is that patience for stalling has run out.

Why Pickaxe Mountain matters

Buried beneath solid granite near Natanz, Pickaxe Mountain — known locally as Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La — has long been viewed as one of the hardest nuclear sites in Iran to reach, let alone neutralize. Foreign policy analysts following the White House talks say the credibility of American military force is exactly what got Iran to the table in the first place, and that credibility only holds if Tehran believes the alternative is real.

“We have not had a credible military deterrent with Iran for 30 or 40 years until President Trump reestablished it,” one defense analyst noted following the meeting. “There is an opportunity if Iran wants to take it for them to pursue a path to peace, but this time they have to actually open the Strait of Hormuz and display a willingness to start the negotiating path to give up their nuclear program.”

President Trump has kept his own message simple and direct. Talks need to move fast, or the pressure campaign resumes. “You can’t bribe them, you have to beat them — and we’re beating the hell out of them,” he said, referring to efforts to keep the Gulf’s shipping lanes open and secure.

No more open-ended talks