President Donald Trump warned Iran to make a nuclear deal with the U.S. or face military strikes far worse than the attack he ordered last June, ratcheting up pressure on the regime even as regional leaders sought to spur fresh diplomacy between the adversaries.

In a social-media post, Trump said the fleet of U.S. ships he’d ordered to the region, led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, was “ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary.”

“Hopefully Iran will quickly ‘Come to the Table’ and negotiate a fair and equitable deal - NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS - one that is good for all parties,” Trump wrote.

Trump has repeatedly warned Iran that the U.S. might launch another attack on the country, but those threats were linked to a deadly crackdown on protests that began in late December. Trump has earlier said Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated” in the strikes last June that targeted three facilities across the country.

Iran has long said it does not want to develop nuclear weapons. Notably, in his latest post, Trump did not demand that Iran end nuclear enrichment, its ballistic missile program or its funding of anti-U.S. proxy militias, all conditions Iran has balked at previously.

At the same time, Trump said earlier this month that Iranian officials had reached out to resume negotiations with the U.S. that were suspended after the June attacks. And signs have emerged in recent months that Iran could restart the program if it wanted. The director U.N. nuclear watchdog, Rafael Mariano Grossi said in an interview last week that the country retains its stockpile of highly-enriched uranium.

Trump has gone back and forth in recent days over whether the U.S. would strike Iran again. He had previously suggested he was less likely to attack after claiming that Iran had agreed not to execute some of the people arrested during the demonstrations.

“We think strikes on Iran are likely, unless the Iranians accept Trump’s extensive demands to decommission their nuclear program — which doesn’t look likely,” Bloomberg Economics analysts Becca Wasser and Dina Esfandiary wrote.

Trump’s latest remarks sent oil to a fresh four-month high. Brent futures reached $68.19 a barrel after Trump’s post, the highest level since the end of September, extending a 3% jump in the previous session.

Iran has also stepped up diplomacy with key powers in the Middle East as it looks to head off more conflict with the U.S. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi held calls on Wednesday with Qatari Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani as well as Egypt’s top diplomat, Badr Abdelatty.

Abdelatty separately spoke to U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff about Iran and “creating conditions for the resumption of dialogue between Washington and Tehran,” the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency reported, citing an official statement.

The Qatari prime minister also spoke with Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. Wednesday’s calls came a day after Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said he won’t allow any of the kingdom’s territories or airspace to be used to carry out military strikes against Iran.

Witkoff and Araghchi led the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program until the negotiations were suspended in the wake of the strikes by Israel and the U.S.

Iran’s latest wave of protests erupted on Dec. 28 initially because of a sudden drop in the value of the currency and spread across the country that emerged as the strongest rebuke of the Islamic Republic in its history. A subsequent crackdown has killed almost 6,000 civilians, according to the latest data collected by U.S.-based Human Rights Activists Network.

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