This talk considers Iran’s relations with America at a time when global concerns over racial politics, gender relations, and social inequality dominated world headlines. Iran's growing engagement with civil rights and gender relations came at an awkward moment in its history, as the ruling monarchy took on themes of social import despite its ironic legacy of political dictatorship. As in America, Iranians dealt with the role of the police in society; the avant-garde in art; and a sexual revolution of their own. However, as my research will show, the bipolar world that Iran navigated in diplomacy sometimes fell apart in the intellectual and political spaces that grappled with race, gender, and social change.