The U.S. and other world powers meeting with Iran in Istanbul this week will press Tehran to take concrete steps to ensure that its nuclear activities are peaceful and to justify continuation of an eight-year diplomatic track that has so far yielded few gains, said American and European officials involved in the negotiations.

Washington and its European allies specifically want to discuss with Iran reworking a year-old proposal that would see President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government ship out a substantial portion of Tehran 's stockpile of low-enriched uranium in return for Western energy assistance, according to these officials.

Western diplomats see such a deal as limiting Iran 's ability to quickly "break-out" and produce the weapons-grade fuel required to develop an atomic bomb. Tehran maintains that its nuclear program is strictly for peaceful purposes.

Representatives from the five permanent United Nations Security Council members, plus Germany, are also seeking to explore with Tehran during talks Friday and Saturday new ways to allow U.N. inspectors greater access to Iran's expanding nuclear infrastructure.

The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has voiced growing concerns in recent months that Tehran is constricting its site visits and access to documentation.

"Prospects for exploring a fuel swap will depend on whether Iranians are ready to get serious," said a senior U.S. official involved in the talks. "Remember, this is meant as a confidence-building measure to begin to demonstrate that their nuclear program is for peaceful purposes."

This week's talks follow negotiations between Tehran and the world powers held in Geneva last month that registered few gains, except for the agreement to hold a second round. But the U.S. and its allies are coming to Turkey voicing increasing confidence that economic sanctions imposed against Iran , as well as other overt and covert actions, are slowing Tehran 's nuclear work.

Israeli officials stunned the international community this month by announcing that they didn't believe Tehran could build an atomic weapon until 2015. Some senior officials in the Jewish state had initially proclaimed that an Iranian bomb would be ready within months.

Many Western officials credit a computer worm, known as Stuxnet, with attacking Iran 's nuclear-enrichment facility at Natanz and making inoperable thousands of the facility's centrifuges. Neither the U.S. nor Israel has either confirmed or denied a role in the cyber attack.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Arab governments last week that Washington believed Tehran 's nuclear program was facing mounting "technical" problems. And this dynamic, said U.S. and European officials, is giving international diplomacy aimed at ending Iran 's nuclear program more time.

"We've been going through vapid talks with the Iranians for a long time. But now, we have real sanctions and a real strategy in place," said a senior European official. " Tehran won't find that more vapid meetings in Istanbul will allow for any alleviation of the growing economic pressure on them."

Iran , however, is coming to Turkey offering no signs that it is willing to respect U.N. Security Council resolutions and suspend its production of nuclear fuel. Tehran is also viewed as having secured a diplomatic victory just by getting the international community to accept Istanbul as the venue for the talks.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has evolved into an important diplomatic friend to Tehran in recent years. Turkey and Brazil were the only two countries on the 15-nation U.N. Security Council that voted last year against a fourth round of economic sanctions being imposed against Iran . And Erdogan's diplomatic team initiated its own attempt to secure an energy-assistance package for Tehran , though the U.S. eventually killed the deal after viewing it as too generous. 

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is hosting a welcome dinner for the participants in the talks Thursday evening. Turkey said Davutoglu won't sit in on any of the formal talks, but many European officials said they expected Turkey 's top diplomat to exert some influence from behind the scenes and to confer with Tehran 's delegation.

Iran is also coming to Istanbul in a strengthened position regionally.

Tehran 's close ally, the militant Lebanese political party Hezbollah, successfully overthrew Beirut 's pro-Western government last week over a dispute tied to a U.N. investigation into the murder of the country's former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Efforts by Washington 's allies in Saudi Arabia and France to mediate the crisis have fizzled. Iran 's diplomatic allies, Turkey , Qatar and Syria , are increasingly filling the diplomatic space.

Iran has also seen its political allies in Iraq and Afghanistan strengthened. And Tehran 's diplomatic team is expected to use the talks in Turkey to try to talk as much about these regional issues as Iran 's own nuclear work.

"We will never negotiate [away] our right to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes," Iran 's ambassador to the U.N., Mohammad Khazaee, told reporters in New York this week. He also denied that the Stuxnet virus or economic sanctions had succeeded in damaging Iran 's nuclear-fuel program. But he stressed that Tehran was eager to find ways to help American forces stabilize Afghanistan , as a prelude to them leaving the Central Asian country.

Iranian officials have also said they were hoping to use the talks to discuss a number of other broader security issues, including counter-narcotics, energy collaboration, and maritime security.

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