This article uses the U.S. bicentennial as a case study to develop two themes about U.S.-British relations in the 1970s. First, the performative framework of commemoration was of considerable importance to the “special relationship.” The U.S. and British governments effectively used the bicentennial of an Anglo-American war to enact and popularize a distinctly useful historical narrative—a story of bilateral unity and strength, shared culture, eternal peace, and friendship—that was useful during the Cold War. Commemoration of the bicentennial signaled British recognition that historical and cultural ties offered a robust source of influence in Washington. Second, as the zenith of Anglo-American cooperation during World War II faded in collective memory, the political salience of commemorative events increased during the Cold War. They became contributory to and constitutive of a continually renewing public narrative of “special” Anglo-American relations that interwove times past, present, and future.

It has long been argued that the Eisenhower administration pursued a more assertive policy toward Iran than the Truman administration did.This interpretative consensus, though, has recently come under challenge.In the Journal of Cold War Studies in 1999, Francis Gavin argued that U.S.policy toward Iran in 1950–1953 became progressively more assertive in response to a gradual shift in the global U.S. -USSR balance of power.This article shares, and develops further, Gavin's revisionist theme of policy continuity, but it explains the continuity by showing that Truman and Eisenhower had the same principal objectives and made the same basic assumptions when devising policy. The more assertive policy was primarily the result of the failure of U.S. policy by early 1952. The Truman administration subsequently adopted a more forceful policy, which Eisenhower simply continued until all perceived options for saving Iran from Communism were foreclosed other than that of instigating a coup to bring about a more pliable government.