On Monday, President Trump announced that his administration would engage in direct negotiations with Iran in an attempt to scale back the Islamist regime’s nuclear capabilities, while simultaneously sending at least two aircraft carriers and other military assets to the Middle East region. Experts say that Iran’s pattern of aggression and bad faith behavior makes it unlikely that the U.S. would be able to peaceably negotiate a dismantling of the regime’s nuclear program.

As noted by The New York Times, if the talks happen on Saturday in Oman as planned, it would mark “the first official face-to-face negotiations between the two countries” since 2018, when the first Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which the Islamist regime repeatedly violated by continuing to enrich uranium.

At the same time, reports surfaced Monday that the U.S. has sent a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East, and has also deployed an “unprecedented” six B-2 stealth bombers to the Diego Garcia military base in the Indian Ocean. As the Times observed, the show of force comes at a “perilous moment” for Iran due to the loss of its “air defenses around its key nuclear sites because of precise Israeli strikes last October. And Iran can no longer rely on its proxy forces in the Middle East — Hamas, Hezbollah and the now-ousted Assad government in Syria — to threaten Israel with retaliation.”

Military experts like Lt. General (Ret.) Jerry Boykin say that the administration’s asset buildup in the Middle East signals a very real chance of direct action against the Islamist regime.

“[I]t tells us that President Trump is serious about this,” he contended during “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Tuesday. “This is not just a show of force. I think he’s serious about it. Now, I don’t think he wants it to turn into a shooting war, but I think that he’s ready to do that.”

Boykin, who formerly served as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, observed that the movement of two aircraft carriers to the region is not a simple operation but involves “a task force of many ships.”

“It is massive, so that’s serious,” he emphasized. “I think it shows Donald Trump’s resolve. … He doesn’t want war because he campaigned on stopping wars. But at the same time, he has a responsibility to protect our country as well as our allies.”

As to whether or not he thinks it is possible to negotiate with Iran, Boykin was blunt. “No,” he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “You and I stood in the office of one of the Middle East leaders, and he looked us in the eye and said, ‘You need to understand that Iran has a blood lust.’ Meaning they want to kill. Can we negotiate with them? Not in good faith. Supposedly, when Barack Obama closed the deal on the JCPOA, they had negotiated in good faith until the inspectors went and found out, well, there were certain facilities that they couldn’t go into which was not part of the JCPOA agreement.”

Boykin, who serves as FRC’s executive vice president, went on to highlight the gravity of Iran’s military stockpile, with some reports suggesting that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime could be weeks away from having a nuclear weapon. “Apparently, according to what we’ve seen, they can have as much as almost 400 pounds of weapons-grade enriched uranium. And that would build seven weapons, seven warheads. That’s dangerous.”

Other experts like Eric Bordenkircher, research fellow at the UCLA Center for Middle East Development, are also expressing concerns over the implications of a nuclear-capable Iran.

“[Y]ou’re dealing with regimes here that are willing to do anything to stay in power,” he told Perkins on Tuesday’s “Washington Watch.” “I think one of the things we need to think about with the nuclear issue in Iran is that when Iran gets a bomb, there’s regime protection and allows this regime to stay in power indefinitely.”

Bordenkircher further explained that a nuclear weapon would “allow Iran to continue to insert its fingers into these other regimes. At the end of the day, the Iranian regime is a revolutionary regime. It came about as a revolution and has sought to extend that revolution, protects it through the Revolutionary Guard, and the Revolutionary Guard also looks to project that into the region.”

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House on Monday to discuss a variety of issues, including Iran’s nuclear program. He suggested that a potential deal with the U.S. should follow the “Libya model,” in which the country’s entire nuclear infrastructure was taken apart and shipped out in 2003.

But Boykin expressed deep skepticism that the model could be repeated in Tehran. “I don’t think it’s possible with the Iranians now. I think the Iranians would potentially come up with something else that they think would appease Donald Trump.” Bordenkircher concurred, remarking, “I don’t think there’s going to be a voluntary dismantlement at this point.”

Still, Boykin further posited that Trump is unlikely to leave the question of Iran’s nuclear capabilities unaddressed before he leaves office. “I don’t think that Donald Trump wants to go down in history as the guy that left Iran with everything they needed to destroy Israel. … I think ultimately [there] is a reasonable chance that they can find a solution, but I think that [there’s] also a good chance that we’re going to wind up seeing a strike over there on their facilities.”