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The stakes are high as Iran prepares to meet six world powers for nuclear talks in Istanbul this weekend, but the meetings will be considered a success if all parties agree merely to keep talking.

How Iran approaches these negotiations will be a good indicator of how successful sanctions have been at convincing its leadership to make concessions on its nuclear program, which the international community suspects is designed not only for nuclear power but also nuclear weapons, the L.A. Times reports. Western officials say that this weekend is Iran's best opportunity to scale back its recalcitrance if it is has any intention of doing so. As sanctions bite harder in coming months, it will become more difficult for Iran's leaders to explain a compromise with the West.

As the Los Angeles Times sums it up, the outcome of the talks could determine the likelihood of nuclear war, the global economic recovery, and the 2012 US presidential election. But diplomats just need to find enough agreement between the world powers (known as P5+1) and Iran to keep talks going beyond the weekend. It appeared less than certain that the talks would even happen until a week ago.

Bloomberg reports that the P5+1 might use the European Union oil embargo, scheduled to begin July 1, as leverage. It could offer to stay that embargo, as well as lift any of the four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions currently in place. In exchange, said a former British ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency who hosted previous negotiations, the powers might request that Iran cap the production of 20 percent enriched uranium, which takes only a matter of months to turn into weapons-grade uranium.

The Associated Press reports that Iran feels it has the upper hand going into negotiations and that in some ways it has already succeeded. "The West — at least at this stage — no longer calls for an all-out halt to uranium enrichment as it did last year. If this path stays, Iran can boast about outmaneuvering the Western demands and keeping the heart of the nuclear program intact. The U.S. and others will then have to sell this outcome to the Israelis," AP reports.

Iran could accede to the world powers' request that it halt its 20 percent enriched uranium production "without any direct pain to its nuclear program" and demand a lifting of some of the sanctions in return, according to AP. It could also comply with demands that it close a recently opened second enrichment site, known as Fordo, without slowing its enrichment too much because another site provides most of Iran's fuel.

According to a separate AP report, the Obama administration wants proof of progress quickly, both to hold off Israel from a military strike and to uphold its own commitment to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

In an Op-Ed for the Washington Post published yesterday, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akhbar Salehi says that Iran has already proven its commitment to talks. "Despite sanctions, threats of war, assassinations of several of our scientists and other forms of terrorism, we have chosen to remain committed to dialogue," he writes, identifying the "key issue between Iran and the United States" as a lack of trust.

In a report for the Monitor published yesterday, Scott Peterson explains the roots of Iranian distrust and why it sees the UN's IAEA as a tool for hostile foreign governments to undermine Tehran.

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