Trump calls U.S. and Iran talks in Oman 'very good' and says there will be another meeting

President Donald Trump said Friday that the high-stakes talks between Iran and the United States in Oman had gone well and that the two sides would meet again next week, though he did not provide any details about the meeting.

“They had a very good meeting with a very high representative Iran, of Iran, and we’ll see how it all turns out,” Trump told a gathering of reporters aboard Air Force One, noting that the country could not be permitted to have nuclear weapons under any deal.

“We’re going to meet again early next week, and they want to make a deal, Iran, as they should want to make a deal,” he added. “They know the consequences if they don’t. If they don’t make a deal, the consequences are very steep. So we’ll see what happens.”

U.S. and Iranian officials did not meet directly but exchanged their positions through Omani mediators, a U.S. official told NBC News.

Tensions have spiked between Iran and the U.S. as Trump has repeatedly warned of a possible military strike.

The U.S. highlighted its military options in a very clear manner on Friday: Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, was in uniform at the talks in Oman.

Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, were the main negotiators.

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Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, the top Iranian official at the talks, was also positive about the discussions on Friday.

“It was a good start. How the talks move on depends on consultations with the capitals,” he said in a mass text message sent to mobile phone users inside Iran. “There was almost a consensus on the continuation of talks and it was agreed they would continue.”

Mass text messages of this kind became common during Iran’s 12-day war with Israel, which was also joined by the U.S. military, last June.

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The U.S. military has been sending aircraft and land-based air defense systems into the Middle East as the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and its attending ships are getting closer to being within striking distance of Tehran, U.S. officials said.

The volatility of the situation was highlighted on Tuesday when a fighter jet from the Abraham Lincoln shot down an Iranian drone as it “aggressively” approached the aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea and appeared to have “unclear intent,” U.S. Central Command said.

While Trump has left open the possibility of pursuing regime change in Iran, two U.S. officials told NBC News that he has not yet settled on precisely what his objectives for any possible military action would be. They also said there is no clear road map or consensus within the administration over what role the U.S. would play after any such operation.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest authority in Iran, warned Sunday that any U.S. attack would kick off a regional war.

At the same time, the Trump administration has ramped up pressure on Iran in other ways. The State Department announced new sanctions on Friday that targeted “15 entities, two individuals, and 14 shadow fleet vessels connected to the illicit trade in Iranian petroleum, petroleum products, and petrochemical products,” according to a State Department statement.

“Time and time again, the Iranian government has prioritized its destabilizing behavior over the safety and security of its own citizens, as demonstrated by the regime’s mass murder of peaceful protestors,” the statement said.

Mass protests were sparked in late December by economic grievances as the rial currency crashed and inflation soared. They morphed into one of the biggest challenges the Iranian regime has faced in the theocracy’s 47-year history, as thousands of people took to the streets to oppose the ruling clergy.

The brutal crackdown that followed was unparalleled in Iran’s modern history, observers say. The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which says that it verifies each death with a network of activists on the ground in Iran and that its data goes through “multiple internal checks,” said Friday that it had confirmed 6,955 deaths. More than 50,000 people have been arrested, the group says.