President Donald Trump revived his threats to use military force against Iran’s senior leadership amid a violent crackdown on nationwide protests, saying late Thursday that an armada of U.S. Navy vessels was en route to the Middle East.

“We have a big flotilla going in that direction and we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One late Thursday as he returned from Davos, Switzerland. “I’d rather not see anything happen, but we’re watching them very closely.”

The new warning comes after Trump walked back a previous pledge to strike the country after saying he received assurances that Iran wouldn’t follow through with the planned executions of hundreds of protesters. Tehran has warned the U.S. and Israel — which carried out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last year — against any attempts to intervene to aid the protests.

Contrary to Trump’s claims that Iran was halting executions of the government’s political opponents, the number of people killed in the protest crackdown has surged, according to human-rights groups. One United Nations special rapporteur said the total could be more than 20,000.

The large-scale protests, the biggest threat to Iran’s ruling regime in decades, were first triggered in Tehran by a collapse in the nation’s currency and then spread nationwide with calls for the end of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s leadership.

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