In the Swiftian world of international relations, every detail, every gesture, is fraught with meaning. One diplomat interprets the innocent sneeze of another diplomat as an insult to his mother, and off they go into Lilliputian-Blefuscudian brinksmanship.

Thankfully, the US has developed a disarming way to put its foreign guests at ease. It is to offer that most unassuming of American food items, one long associated with baseball, barbecues and occasional gastrointestinal distress: the hot dog.

In the formal language of diplomacy, perhaps, the presentation of a hot dog may say: “On behalf of the United States of America, may we offer you this tubular delight of meat, meat byproducts, curing agents and spices?” But what it really says is: “How ya doin’? Wanna beer?”

Such is the democratic charm of the hot dog.

Last week, the State Department informed its embassies and consulates that they could now invite officials from Iran to their Fourth of July receptions. Iranian diplomats have been off the invite list ever since the 1979 seizure by protesters of the American Embassy in Tehran.

Finally, representatives of the Iranian government are welcome to annual Independence Day parties, which, as The Times’s Mark Landler reported, usually include “hot dogs, red-white-and-blue bunting and some perfunctory remarks about the founding fathers.”

There is no record of the founding fathers ever eating hot dogs, no trace of mustard on the Declaration of Independence. But the hot dog has played a role in American foreign relations since at least June 1939, when the king and queen of England attended a picnic at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s estate while soliciting American support for England in the war about to consume Europe.

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