Iran and the United States wrapped up a second round of diplomatic talks over Tehran’s nuclear activities on Saturday, setting an agenda for rapid-paced negotiations that, according to Iranian officials, would not require the dismantlement of the country’s extensive nuclear infrastructure.

Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, said after meeting Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s envoy, that an expert group would meet in the coming days to discuss technical details, including setting the maximum levels to which Iran could enrich uranium, the size of nuclear stockpiles it could retain and how compliance with any agreement could be monitored and verified.

But implicit in that description of the future negotiations was an assumption that President Trump would be willing to back down from the administration’s original insistence that all of Iran’s major nuclear sites and long-range missile arsenals must be subject to what Michael Waltz, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, recently called “full dismantlement.”

The question of whether to allow Iran to retain the ability to produce nuclear fuel — with the risk that it could use it to create a bomb — has sharply divided Mr. Trump’s advisers. Those divisions have broken out in public in recent days, even as Mr. Witkoff, a real estate developer and friend of the president, was preparing for the talks that took place on Saturday at the residence of the Omani ambassador in Rome. Oman is acting as mediator in the talks.

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Iran hawks in the administration, led by Mr. Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have argued that it is far too risky to leave Iran with the ability to make its own nuclear fuel.

And agreeing to limits on how much uranium Iran can possess and how much enrichment it can perform exposes Mr. Trump to the critique that he is simply replicating key elements of the 2015 Obama-era nuclear agreement, which he called a “disaster” and ultimately ripped up in 2018.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.