In 2009, President Ahmadinejad and his administration began to invoke nationalist sentiments, paying homage to Iran’s pre-Islamic history—a significant shift from the Islamic Republic’s 30-year practice of disparaging this period. Does the official use of this discourse indicate the emergence of a new form of nationalism based in Islam and Persian history and even a shift in Iranian conceptions of a nation? Or the government is trying to co-opt the symbols of their political opponents? What are the political conditions creating this new discourse? Does it differ from versions of nationalism promoted by the Shah and its counter proposed during the early years of the Islamic Republic? This essay, based on two years of fieldwork in Iran, examines the conditions and ramifications of this discursive shift through a qualitative comparative analysis of an array of textual materials. In particular, it asks how the new discourse’s conception of the relationship between history, religion, and politics differs from the Shi‘i-oriented nationalism promoted during the early years of the Republic as well as from the secular alternative proposed by the previous Pahlavi dynasty. I discuss the internal political context and growing domestic opposition that have made this discourse possible and that result from a political climate that has rendered both of the older brands of nationalism inadequate. Ahmadinejad has responded to this climate by strategically adopting the new discourse, which is built on a return to the pre-Islamic grandeur of Persia and is buttressed by apocalyptic Shi‘i eschatology. The paper will also address religious and political genealogies of Ahmadinejad’s discourse by looking at the modes by which Abbasid, Safavid, and Qajar dynasties mobilized support and legitimated their rules. Through this analysis, the hope is to present a multi-layered portrait of the roots and ramifications of this contemporary shift toward what I term “Neo-Iranian Nationalism.”