ROME >> Iran and the United States wrapped up a second round of diplomatic talks Saturday over Tehran’s nuclear activities, 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 Donald 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 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, 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 Trump’s advisers. Those divisions have broken out in public in recent days, even as Witkoff, a real estate developer and friend of the president, was preparing for the talks that took place Saturday at the residence of the Omani ambassador in Rome. Oman is acting as mediator in the talks.

Iran hawks in the administration, led by 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 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.

Iranian officials have said that they will not disassemble or destroy the nuclear infrastructure in which they have invested billions of dollars. Witkoff has told administration officials privately that if they insist on full dismantlement, he is unlikely to emerge from the talks with a deal — the only way to avoid a military attack on Iran’s facilities, Trump has said. Israel has been pressing for military action against Iran’s nuclear sites, which would likely involve the United States.

U.S. officials did not give any details of the negotiating session that Witkoff held Saturday with Araghchi, who was a key negotiator in the 2015 accord.

But in private conversations leading up to the session, the Iranians had told U.S. officials that they were willing to reduce enrichment levels to those specified in the 2015 agreement struck with the Barack Obama administration: 3.67%, the level needed to produce fuel for nuclear power plants.