WASHINGTON – Even as the United States and Iran prepare for talks on Iraq, the two foes seem to be going out of their way to irritate one another.

No one, at least not for the past three decades, has accused the two countries of enjoying cordial relations. A meeting of their ambassadors to Iraq apparently is just days away and both nations are stepping up the complaints and allegations.

_On Tuesday, Tehran said it was willing to attend the meeting. Washington said it would be “appropriate.” At the same time, Iran’s state-run television aired footage of two Iranian-Americans, detained in Iran on espionage suspicions, who were confessing to alleged misdeeds. The U.S. said it was “appalled” by the move and renewed calls for their release.

_ On Wednesday, Iran said it had accepted a U.S. request for the meeting. Washington said it was “likely,” but disputed the assertion that Washington had sought the session. The U.S. also decried as “alarming” and “outrageous” the suggestion Monday by a top aide to Iran’s supreme leader that the Gulf state of Bahrain belongs to Iran.

For the U.S., these actions add to existing concerns about Iran’s nuclear program; President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s calls for the destruction of Israel; its ties with U.S. antagonists Syria and Venezuela; and its support for militant Iraqi, Palestinian and Lebanese groups.

For Iran, which has tens of thousands of U.S. troops in countries on its eastern and western borders, the Bush administration’s positions are just as worrisome.

In Washington, foreign policy makers are scratching their heads.

“It’s an opaque decision-making process in this regime,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Wednesday. “They’re not exactly a free and open regime. … So it’s very difficult to gain any insight as to what exactly their decision-making processes are.”

His comments came in response to reporters’ questions about the Iranian-American detainees; the continued mystery over the unexplained March disappearance in Iran of former FBI agent Robert Levinson; the detention of five Iranians in Iraq who the U.S. says were aiding insurgents; and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The U.S. long has protested Iran’s alleged support for Shia insurgents in Iraq. It also has claimed that Tehran is helping provide them with sophisticated explosives that threaten U.S. troops.

But it was the claim of Iranian sovereignty over Bahrain, the home of U.S. 5th Fleet, that produced the most heated back and forth.

“This is just another in a series of outrageous statements out of Iranian leadership,” McCormack said. “You have President Ahmadinejad multiple times talking about wiping Israel off the map. Now they’ve shifted their focus to Bahrain and they want to gobble up Bahrain.

“It’s another indication of how this is a regime that operates completely outside the accepted norms of international behavior,” McCormack said

Still, only a day earlier, McCormack was opining on the advisability of formal talks with Iranian officials from that regime to impress on them the need for Tehran to stop supporting Shia insurgents in Iraq.

“It is important to directly convey to the Iranian government the importance of their changing their behavior, not only for the safety of our troops, but also for the future of Iraq,” he said.

Just hours later, though, the tone was markedly different. McCormack released a statement about the Iranian-American detainees and the headline said, “Iran Unjustly Parades American Citizens.”

“The United States is appalled at (their) mistreatment,” according to the statement. “We are outraged that the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran would parade two of these American citizens on state-run television … apparently reading statements made under duress.”

That statement followed the airing of footage of Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh, two of four dual U.S.-Iranian citizens accused of endangering Iran’s national security.

On Wednesday, Iranian television broadcast more video that purports to show them making incriminating statements about plotting subversion in Iran.

So, while U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and Iran’s envoy, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, prepare for only the second high-level meeting between the two countries since 1979, diplomatic cordiality has been tossed aside. Crocker and Qomi met once already, May 28 in Baghdad.

“What you have is a picture of a country that is 180-degrees opposite in its policy orientation than where most of the rest of the world is,” McCormack said. “They have a couple of friends, like the Syrians and the Venezuelans but they are headed in a completely different direction from the rest of the world.”

A service of the Associated Press(AP)