While the concept of modern “nationalism” is largely considered to be doctrinally antithetical to the tenets of Islamic political ideology in Iran, the Islamic Republic has employed and re-imagined nationalism alongside Islam in a variety of ways since the revolution. Interestingly—and perhaps paradoxically—one of the significant areas in which this phenomenon has occurred is in the state’s renewed drive to “indigenize” the Western social sciences into alternative Islamic social sciences since the end of the twentieth century. A key component of this program is what the Supreme Leader has repeatedly described as the “Iranian-Islamic model of progress”—a model rooted in Islam but with an eye to the unique qualities and assets of the Iranian nation, a model that should serve as the guideline and vision with which to undertake state reform and transformation in a path different from either East or West. This paper focuses on the ideas underpinning and driving the conceptualization of an “Iranian-Islamic model of progress” in order to gain greater insight into how nationalism and religion have been refashioned and re-combined by revolutionary elites who should expectedly be most disinclined to emphasize the nation. By studying the ways in which nationalist ideas permeate a seemingly non-nationalist enterprise—the Islamization of knowledge—this paper will identify the conceptual fault lines separating the normative authorities of religious thought and nationalism and will demonstrate how Islamic revolutionary thinkers have sought to reconcile the inherent tensions within such an undertaking. In addition, by contextualizing this movement in relation to reformist thoughts and responses, it will also shed light on the increasing theoretical sophistication with which the regime attempts to justify its rule and bolster its authority. Based on several months of fieldwork in Iran, in-depth interviews with Islamist thinkers, new primary sources of the content of such Islamic sciences, as well as an analysis of the speeches of the Iranian Supreme Leader and key regime and Revolutionary Guards officials, this paper will contribute to not only a more thorough understanding of the ideological currents and tensions within the wide spectrum of the Iranian elite but also to the larger theoretical literature on nationalism and religion in the Middle East more broadly.