US President Donald Trump has publicly named a suspected underground nuclear complex in Iran — known to Washington as Pickaxe Mountain — as one of the targets the United States still has to “take care of”, saying it could be done “in 10 minutes”. Trump made the remarks to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, on Saturday, October 31, as he arrived for a Halloween party, AFP reported.

Source: AFP via Malay Mail

“We've knocked out their nuclear. We still have to take care of, I would say one or two sites, but we can do that in 10 minutes,” Trump said. “You probably could look at Pickaxe Mountain, and you have to take care of that. We can do that all very quickly,” he added, referring to the underground complex tunnelled into Kolang Gaz-La Mountain near Natanz, in Iran's Isfahan province. The Iranian government has denied that any nuclear work is carried out at the site.

Source: AFP via Malay Mail

At the same time, Trump said the United States was “not in a hurry” to launch fresh offensive action, because in his assessment Iran's military and nuclear programme had already been decimated. He maintained that negotiations to end the war, which the United States and Israel began at the end of February, were “going fine but you know they're not very reliable”, Arab News reported via The Business Standard.

Source: Arab News via The Business Standard

Trump's naming of a specific target came on the same day Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei warned, in a statement to his top military commanders, that any renewed US or Israeli attack would be met with an “immediate, impactful and geographically unrestricted response”, and ordered Iran's target list updated to cover all tangible and intangible American and Israeli assets. Khamenei has not been seen in public since before he took over in March, after his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening US-Israeli strikes.

Source: AFP via Malay Mail

Awaaz Punjab reported Khamenei's retaliation order and the Doha mediation track in detail earlier: read the full Iran warning story

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, however, said on Saturday that Trump had not made any decision on fresh strikes against Iran, and that Washington remained open to a diplomatic solution, AFP reported. Trump also said a letter sent by Vice President JD Vance to Iran's security chief Mohsen Rezaei concerned efforts to help Iran obtain medical supplies, according to RFE/RL's live coverage.

Source: RFE/RL

Diplomatic efforts to head off a resumption of fighting are continuing in parallel: Qatari mediators were in Tehran on Friday and talks continued in Doha on Saturday, while Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said there are currently no plans for direct meetings with US officials. For the lakhs of Punjabi and Indian workers across the Gulf — and for oil and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which Tehran has restricted since the war began — any return to strikes after Tuesday's US midterm elections would carry immediate risks, which is why both capitals' words are being watched so closely this weekend.

Source: AFP via Malay Mail