Sarah: Trump has named a mountain — Pickaxe — and says the U.S.
Sarah: will hit it 'pretty soon.'
Sarah: I want to know whose intelligence put that target on his desk.
Sarah: If you're just joining, the renewed U.S.-Iran war had already moved beyond isolated strikes before this latest round.
Sarah: U.S. attacks resumed inside Iran
Sarah: Tehran hit U.S.-linked positions across the region
Sarah: and the Pentagon identified two Army air-defense soldiers killed at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan — with another service member possibly
Sarah: killed as operations continued.
Rich: This is Iran War Daily.
Rich: Tonight — a tanker crew abandoning ship in the Strait, a nuclear complex under a mountain, and Rubio saying Tehran isn't 'serious.'
Rich: Let's start with that mountain.
Sarah: This one's from ABC News:
Quote: The US military says it has completed an 11th consecutive night of strikes on Iran
Quote: Tuesday local time with reports of a number of explosions across the country. Earlier
Quote: Donald Trump had signalled the US is "not finished" attacking Iran and warned American forces could soon target a site where it suspects
Quote: Tehran is developing an undeclared enrichment facility.
Sarah: Here's the escalation tonight: U.S.
Sarah: Central Command says an 11th straight night of strikes is done
Sarah: and Trump has now put a name on the next target — Pickaxe Mountain
Sarah: near Natanz. But hold onto the word 'suspected' there. Trump says the U.S.
Sarah: could target a site where it suspects an undeclared enrichment facility — so that's still a suspected facility he's threatening to bomb
Sarah: not a confirmed one.
Rich: And the case for Pickaxe runs through Israel — Israeli intelligence says Iran moved centrifuges under that mountain
Rich: and now Trump's holding it up as a target.
Rich: Somebody handed Washington a justification.
Rich: I want to know who, and why now.
Sarah: That's the part I'd watch — U.S.
Sarah: intelligence reviewing an Israeli assessment.
Sarah: Two steps away from a confirmed fact before anyone drops a bomb on it.
Rich: Meanwhile CENTCOM's own line is that the strikes are about shipping in Hormuz — hangars, drone sites.
Rich: Eleven nights of that and Trump's suddenly talking nuclear tunnels near Natanz?
Rich: The mission statement keeps moving.
Sarah: NBC News, with Mosheh Gains, Courtney Kube, Gordon Lubold:
Quote: The Defense Department on Monday released the names of two soldiers killed in Iranian strikes in Jordan
Quote: identifying them as 25-year-old Tyler James Feehan of Hawaii and 19-year-old Isabella Gonzales of Texas.
Quote: Gonzales was killed Friday and Feehan on Saturday.
Quote: The Pentagon did not provide details on the exact circumstances of their deaths.
Sarah: The Pentagon has now put names to the two soldiers killed in Jordan: Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Hawaii, and Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Texas.
Sarah: Gonzales was killed Friday, Feehan Saturday.
Sarah: And one detail to keep in mind — per NBC
Sarah: both were assigned to missile-defense commands under Operation Inherent Resolve
Sarah: the counter-ISIS mission that's been running since 2014.
Sarah: The Pentagon says they were not technically part of the Iran war.
Rich: Right — and then Trump stands in front of reporters Sunday and says they died making sure Iran can't get a nuclear weapon.
Rich: Two different missions, one convenient sentence.
Sarah: That's the split, Rich.
Sarah: The Defense Department files them under Inherent Resolve; the President folds them into Operation Epic Fury.
Sarah: Same deaths, two different stories about why.
Rich: A 19-year-old from Texas gets drafted posthumously into the war the White House wants to be fighting.
Rich: And there's the possible third case — a service member killed in northern Iraq, plus unidentified remains being recovered in Jordan.
Rich: That part still hasn't closed.
Sarah: AP News, with Ben Finley; Farnoosh Amiri:
Quote: The U.S. and Iran are back to bombing every day in a bid to control the Strait of Hormuz.
Quote: And neither is backing down
Quote: showing the limitations of President Donald Trump’s reliance on escalating airstrikes to bend Tehran to his will.
Rich: A tanker crew is climbing into lifeboats in the Strait of Hormuz this morning — abandoning ship — on the same day the U.S.
Rich: runs its eleventh strike package.
Rich: Eleven nights of bombing and Iran still shut a vessel down in the chokepoint.
Sarah: AP's Ben Finley and Farnoosh Amiri put it sharply: daily airstrikes are hitting a ceiling.
Sarah: Iran gets hit every night and still reaches out and touches shipping in the Gulf whenever it chooses.
Rich: So ask the war-risk underwriters.
Rich: What's Lloyd's quoting to write a hull policy on a tanker transiting Hormuz today versus two weeks ago?
Rich: Because that number is the honest scoreboard here, not the strike count.
Sarah: And before we fold this into a pattern, I'd want the vessel details — whose flag, what cargo, who operated it.
Sarah: One documented abandonment tells us more than the broad 'Hormuz battlefield' language we've been swimming in.
Rich: Right — because a crew in the water is a fact.
Rich: Trump 'bending Tehran to his will' is a press line.
Rich: The AP just put those two things side by side and let the gap sit there.
Sarah: From Darren Lyn at Anadolu Agency:
Quote: Israeli intelligence believes that Iran moved thousands of nuclear centrifuges into tunnels deep inside Pickaxe Mountain
Quote: and US President Donald Trump has threatened to attack the site
Quote: according to a Tuesday report by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
Quote: The report indicates that Tehran transferred thousands of uranium-enriched centrifuges to Pickaxe Mountain
Quote: also known as Mount Kolang in Iran
Quote: last fall after the 12-day war in June when American and Israeli forces conducted airstrikes on Iran's three main nuclear sites.
Rich: So the WSJ says Israel believes Iran moved thousands of centrifuges into the tunnels under Pickaxe Mountain last fall — and now Trump's
Rich: threatening to hit it.
Rich: The question I've got: who built that intelligence picture?
Rich: Because it reads like Netanyahu handed Washington a target it couldn't map on its own.
Sarah: And that's the part I want to slow down on.
Sarah: This is an Israeli intelligence assessment, then reviewed by U.S.
Sarah: intelligence, then reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Sarah: That puts us two steps away before we treat the centrifuge relocation as fact.
Sarah: Anadolu dates the move to after June — after American and Israeli forces struck Iran's three main sites in that 12-day war.
Sarah: So the claim is that Iran rebuilt underground.
Sarah: Believed, not confirmed — not by inspection, not by the IAEA in this report.
Rich: And the WSJ says it plainly — Israel's war aims have diverged from Washington's, and Netanyahu's pushing Trump to resume all-out attacks.
Rich: So when Israel's the one supplying the assessment that justifies the next strike, I'd want to know who decided to make it public and when.
Sarah: Al Jazeera is tracking this.
Sarah: Marco Rubio, on the record today via Al Jazeera, AFP and Reuters: the U.S.
Sarah: is 'open' to negotiations, but Tehran isn't 'serious.'
Sarah: Put that next to Baghaei two days ago, saying Iran has proposals in hand from several mediators and the channel is live.
Rich: Open to talks. On night eleven.
Rich: While we're publicly naming Pickaxe Mountain as the next target.
Rich: That's a funny definition of open.
Sarah: A named U.S. official and a named Iranian official, forty-eight hours apart, describing the same channel in opposite terms.
Sarah: I'm not going to smooth that over — the gap is the story.
Rich: And nobody's asked Rubio what 'serious' actually means.
Rich: Because if the ask includes a nuclear complex buried under a mountain that eleven rounds of strikes haven't cracked
Rich: then 'not serious' is just Washington's word for 'won't surrender the thing we can't hit.'
Sarah: It's the first named U.S.
Sarah: response on the diplomatic track since Baghaei briefed.
Sarah: It's partial, but it's public — and 'suspended' is now being said out loud, not just allowed to drift.
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Host: We’ve put links to all of today’s stories in the show notes, so if there’s one you want to spend more time with, you can find it there.
Host: That’s Iran War Daily for today.
Host: This is a Lantern Podcast.