President Trump announced on Monday that the U.S. will engage “directly” with Iran in a high-level meeting scheduled for this Saturday.

“We have a very big meeting on Saturday, and we’re dealing with them directly,” Trump stated to reporters in the Oval Office, alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This meeting marks the first known direct engagement between the U.S. and Iran since the Trump administration withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018.

“We’ll see what can happen. I think everyone agrees that a deal is preferable to the obvious,” Trump said, referring to his threat last week to take action if Iran didn’t enter talks to halt its nuclear program.

“[That’s] not something that I want to be involved with, or frankly, that Israel wants to be involved with, if they can avoid it,” Trump added. “We’re going to see if we can avoid it.

“It’s getting to be very dangerous territory,” Trump cautioned. “And hopefully those talks will be successful.”

The president declined to specify the location of the talks or how they would differ from the JCPOA, only stating that they would be “different” and “stronger.”

Following the U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA, the agreement effectively collapsed, and Iran began rapidly advancing its nuclear program, despite the remaining signatories (U.K., China, France, Russia, and Germany).

Earlier this year, the U.N. nuclear watchdog cautioned that Tehran had accumulated enough near-weapons-grade enriched uranium to potentially build a nuclear device if further enriched.

“I think if the talks aren’t successful with Iran… Iran is going to be in great danger,” Trump stated on Monday.

It remains unclear if Israel, or any other countries, will participate in the talks, though Netanyahu affirmed that Jerusalem is aligned with the U.S. in securing an agreement to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

“We’re both united in the goal that Iran does not ever get nuclear weapons, that it can be done diplomatically in a full way, the way it was done in Libya,” Netanyahu told reporters. “I think that would be a good thing.

“But whatever happens, we have to make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons,” he concluded.