SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – US President Donald Trump said that negotiations with Iran toward a nuclear deal are going “very well,” while addressing reporters at the Oval Office on Thursday.

Following a meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store in the Oval Office, Trump told reporters that he thinks that they are “doing very well on an agreement with Iran.”

An agreement with Iran on the nuclear issue is “well on its way and we could have a very, very good decision and a lot of lives will be saved," the US president added.

Top delegations from Iran and the US came together in Oman's Muscat earlier in April, which was followed by another meeting a week later in Rome to discuss Iran's nuclear program and find a middle ground to address their conflicts around the nuclear issue.

Another expert-level meeting is set to take place on Saturday in Oman to iron out more details about a potential nuclear deal between the two adversaries, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said after the Rome meeting.

Araghchi struck a positive tone when describing the talks in Rome, telling Iranian state media that “this time we managed to reach a better understanding on a series of principles and goals,” with a US statement similarly praising the diplomatic effort as having “made very good progress.”

The talks between Washington and Tehran began after Trump implemented a “maximum pressure” campaign seeking to pressure Iran into forfeiting its burgeoning nuclear program, long-feared by Western powers as a precursor to the country developing nuclear weapons.

The US, European powers, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have repeatedly raised concerns that Tehran is accelerating on its path toward developing nuclear weapons.

In 2015, world powers agreed to ease international sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs on Tehran’s nuclear program, a deal that came to be known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The United States, during the first Trump administration, unilaterally withdrew from the landmark agreement and reimposed economic sanctions, causing extensive damage to the Iranian economy.