The United States will begin “direct” negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear program this weekend, President Donald Trump said on Monday.

“We’re having direct talks with Iran,” the president said. “They’ve started — they’ll go on Saturday, we’ll have a very big meeting. We’ll see what can happen. I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious. And the obvious is not something that I want to be involved with or frankly that Israel wants to be involved with if they can avoid it.”

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The president announced the meeting but did not specify who would be involved during public comments in the Oval Office alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday afternoon. Trump said the officials involved will be from a “very high level … almost the highest level.”

Trump said last month that he wrote a letter to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressing openness to a new nuclear agreement seven years after he pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 agreement during his first term in office.

“I said, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate’ because it’s going to be a lot better for Iran, and I think they want to get that letter,” Trump said at the time. “The other alternative is we have to do something because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”

The president has exerted a “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran.

Last week, Trump said Iran would face “bombing the likes of which they have never seen before” if Tehran did not reach an agreement, while Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said he had rejected direct negotiations.

As the administration has pursued negotiations with Tehran, the U.S. military has also deployed thousands of troops to the region.

US BOOSTS IRAN STRIKE OPTIONS WITH AIRCRAFT CARRIER AND BOMBER DEPLOYMENTS

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth directed the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group to remain in the Middle East and ordered the USS Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group to sail to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility once it completes a scheduled exercise in the Indo-Pacific. The secretary also ordered the deployment of additional squadrons and other air assets to the region.

The U.S. appeared to have deployed half a dozen nuclear-capable stealth bombers on a tiny British island in the Indian Ocean within striking distance of Iran.