Pickaxe Mountain focus revives debate over India’s Kahuta restraint

A Times of India article renewed focus on Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, described as central to a West Asia conflict nearing its five-month mark, has revived debate over whether India could have struck Pakistan’s Kahuta uranium-enrichment facility in the 1980s.

The report says US President Donald Trump has again threatened to target the mountain, where Iran has hidden nuclear facilities in man-made tunnels, while the United States and Israel seek to deny Iran nuclear-weapons capability.

The article frames the Kahuta debate through earlier efforts to block nuclear programmes, including Allied operations against a heavy-water facility in Telemark during World War II, Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osiraq reactor, the 2007 Israeli attack on Syria’s al-Kibar site, and strikes linked to Iran’s Natanz facility. It says Israel and the United States struck Natanz in June last year and that the site, roughly 250 km south of Tehran, was hit again in the opening days of the current conflict.

On Kahuta, the report says intelligence agencies had confirmed by the late 1970s that Pakistan was enriching uranium there, east of Islamabad, and that Indian planners debated a precision raid. It cites US State Department documents released in 2015, via a Brookings Institution report, as showing the Indian Air Force studied the feasibility of an air strike in 1981 and concluded an attack would have succeeded if carried out, while warning it could trigger a wider conflict.

Air Marshal GS Bedi (retired), described as an author and former Director General (Inspection & Safety), is quoted as saying Kahuta was within reach of MiG-21/23 and newly inducted Jaguar aircraft, but that strategic considerations weighed against an attack. Lieutenant General K R Rao (retired), former DG Artillery, is quoted as saying a retaliatory strike on Trombay threatened “a radiological disaster for Mumbai”.

The article says New Delhi never attempted a pre-emptive strike on Kahuta, a decision shaped by caution, international pressure and fear of escalation. Pakistan achieved nuclear capability by the late 1980s, responded to India’s May 1998 Pokhran tests with its own tests 17 days later, and India and Pakistan later institutionalised restraint through a 1988 agreement barring attacks on nuclear facilities and annual exchanges of nuclear-site lists.