B61-11 nuclear earth-penetrator enters Pickaxe Mountain debate after Tucker Carlson claims Trump is weighing nuclear strike on Iran

The B61-11, an American nuclear bomb specifically designed to penetrate the ground before detonating, has emerged in discussion over Iran’s deeply buried Pickaxe Mountain complex after Tucker Carlson claimed President Donald Trump is considering a nuclear strike on the site.

Unlike conventional bunker-buster bombs, the B61-11 does not need to physically reach an underground facility. It penetrates only a relatively short distance into the earth before detonation, using the resulting nuclear explosion to transmit a powerful shock wave through surrounding rock.

U.S. Air Force testing found the weapon could penetrate roughly 15 to 25 feet into the ground. In 1998 tests in frozen Alaskan soil, two inert B61-11 test weapons reached depths of six and 10 feet.

The National Academies has found that even shallow underground detonation can substantially increase the destructive ground shock against hardened and deeply buried targets compared with a surface nuclear explosion.

That capability has drawn attention because Pickaxe Mountain, located about two kilometers south of Iran’s Natanz enrichment complex, is believed to contain tunnels buried beneath roughly 100 meters of rock.

Carlson claimed Sunday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pressing Trump to authorize a nuclear attack on Pickaxe Mountain because conventional U.S. weapons cannot destroy it. He cited an unnamed “informed observer” and provided no documentary evidence for the assertion.

No U.S. official has said the B61-11 is being considered for Iran, and neither the White House nor Israel has confirmed Carlson’s broader claim that a nuclear strike is under consideration.

The B61-11 itself would not penetrate anywhere close to the depth of the Iranian tunnels. Its potential effectiveness against a facility such as Pickaxe Mountain would instead depend on factors including the nuclear yield, geology, tunnel depth and configuration, all of which contain significant uncertainties.

A nuclear earth-penetrating explosion would also not be contained underground. Studies have warned that such a detonation could eject large quantities of radioactive material and produce extensive fallout.

The United States has not used a nuclear weapon in combat since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Any nuclear attack on Iran would therefore break a more than eight-decade-old precedent against nuclear weapons use in war.

Trump, however, explicitly said last month that he would not use nuclear weapons against Iran, saying: “We don’t have to.”