President Donald Trump met with his top national security aides on Tuesday to discuss Iran’s nuclear program ahead of a second meeting between U.S. and Iranian officials on Saturday, sources said.

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff is to meet his Iranian counterpart on Saturday, a session currently scheduled to be held in Oman. Trump spoke to the sultan of Oman, Haitham bin Tariq, about Oman’s mediation role between Washington and Tehran.

A White House official confirmed the White House Situation Room meeting on Iran and said the location was not unusual since Trump gets briefed there regularly to take advantage of the chamber’s secure setting.

A second source briefed on the meeting said Trump and his top aides discussed the Iran talks and next steps. U.S. officials have been working on a framework for a potential nuclear deal.

Trump has threatened military action against Iran if it does not give up its nuclear program while also stressing the need for diplomacy and negotiations.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Trump’s bottom line in the talks, which included an initial session last Saturday, is he wanted to use negotiations to ensure Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.

Trump and the Omani leader also discussed ongoing U.S. operations against Yemen’s Houthis, she said.

“The maximum pressure campaign on Iran continues,” Leavitt said at a press briefing. “The president has made it clear he wants to see dialogue and discussion with Iran, while making his directive about Iran never being able to obtain a nuclear weapon quite clear.”

She added that he had “emphasized” this directive during the call with Sultan Haitham.

Both sides described last weekend’s U.S.-Iran talks in Oman as positive.

Trump has restored a “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran since February, after he ditched a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and six world powers during his first term and reimposed crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Iran’s nuclear program has leaped forward since then. The two countries held indirect talks during former President Joe Biden’s term but made little, if any progress.

Iran’s clerical rulers have publicly said that demands such as dismantling the country’s peaceful nuclear program or its conventional missile capabilities were off the table.

President Donald Trump said on Monday he believes Iran is intentionally delaying a nuclear deal with the United States and that it must abandon any drive for a nuclear weapon or face a possible military strike on Tehran’s atomic facilities, Reuters reported.

“I think they’re tapping us along,” Trump told reporters after U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff met in Oman on Saturday with a senior Iranian official.

Both Iran and the United States said on Saturday that they held “positive” and “constructive” talks in Oman. A second round is scheduled for Saturday, and a source briefed on the planning said the meeting was likely to be held in Rome.

The source, speaking to Reuters on the condition of anonymity, said the discussions are aimed at exploring what is possible, including a broad framework of what a potential deal would look like.

“Iran has to get rid of the concept of a nuclear weapon. They cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.

Asked if U.S. options for a response include a military strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, Trump said: “Of course it does.”

Trump said the Iranians need to move fast to avoid a harsh response because “they’re fairly close” to developing a nuclear weapon.

The U.S. and Iran held indirect talks during former President Joe Biden’s term but they made little, if any progress. The last known direct negotiations between the two governments were under then-President Barack Obama, who spearheaded the 2015 international nuclear deal that Trump later abandoned, read the report.

The European Union will increase its financial support for the Palestinian Authority with a three-year package worth around 1.6 billion euros ($1.8 billion), the European Commissioner responsible for the Middle East told Reuters in an interview.

Dubravka Suica, the European Commissioner for the Mediterranean, said the financial support would go hand in hand with reforms of the Palestinian Authority, which has been accused by critics of corruption and bad governance.

“We want them to reform themselves because without reforming, they won’t be strong enough and credible in order to be an interlocutor, not for only for us, but an interlocutor also for Israel,” Suica said.

The commissioner’s remarks came ahead of a first “high-level political dialogue” between European Union foreign ministers and senior Palestinian officials including Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa in Luxembourg on Monday.

The EU is the biggest donor to the Palestinians and EU officials hope the Palestinian Authority, which runs the West Bank, may also one day take responsibility for Gaza after the war between Israel and Hamas militants comes to an end, Reuters reported.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, however, has so far rejected the idea of handing over Gaza to the PA and shunned the EU’s broader aim of a two-state solution, which would include the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Suica said 620 million euros would go to financial support and reform of the PA, 576 million euros to “resilience and recovery” of the West Bank and Gaza and 400 million euros would come in loans from the European Investment Bank, subject to the approval of its governing body, Reuters reported.

She said average EU support for the PA had amounted to about 400 million euros over the past 12 years.

“We are investing now in a credible manner in the Palestinian Authority,” Suica said.

I think that the United States Steel one of the great companies of the world should remain in our country.