Iran and the United States will resume nuclear talks on Friday in Turkey, Iranian and US officials told Reuters on Monday, and US President Donald Trump warned that with US warships heading to Iran, “bad things” would probably happen if a deal could not be reached.

US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi will meet in Istanbul in an effort to revive diplomacy over a long-running dispute about Iran’s nuclear program and dispel fears of a new regional war, while a regional diplomat said representatives from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt would also participate.

Trump reiterated Monday that a large fleet of US military vessels was sailing toward Iran.

“We have ships heading to Iran right now, big ones — the biggest and the best — and we have talks going on with Iran and we’ll see how it all works out,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “If we can work something out, that would be great and if we can’t, probably bad things would happen.

“I’d like to see a deal negotiated. I don’t know that that’s going to happen,” he added.

Tensions are running high amid a US naval buildup near Iran, following a violent crackdown against anti-government demonstrations last month, the deadliest domestic unrest in Iran since its 1979 revolution.

Trump, who stopped short of carrying out threats to intervene during the crackdown, has since demanded Tehran make nuclear concessions and sent a flotilla to its coast. He said last week Iran was “seriously talking,” while Tehran’s top security official Ali Larijani said arrangements for negotiations were under way.

Iranian sources told Reuters last week that Trump had demanded three conditions for resumption of talks: zero enrichment of uranium in Iran, limits on Tehran’s ballistic missile program and ending its support for regional proxies.

Iran has long rejected all three demands as unacceptable infringements of its sovereignty, but two Iranian officials told Reuters its clerical rulers saw the ballistic missile program, rather than uranium enrichment, as the bigger obstacle.

The New York Times cited two regional officials as saying Iran was indicating a readiness to halt or suspend its nuclear program.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran was considering........

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