This paper interrogates four prominent aspects of Iranian culture. First, from the late nineteenth century onward, those who have viewed themselves as critiques and articulators of cultural values and trends, namely the country’s thinkers, writers, and philosophers, have sought to understand and to grapple with what could best be described as the problematique of modernity. This is not to imply that modernity has been universally sought after; the very essence of the Islamic Republic has been antithetical to however it is that modernity maybe conceptualized. Nevertheless, whatever it is that modernity stands for, and however it may be defined, has been a source of preoccupation for the country’s cultural commentators. And, for society at large, navigating modernity and its antitheses has been a fact of life. Second has been the role of the state as a crafter and influencer of culture. Insofar as Iranian culture is concerned, the state has been a permanent presence since the early 1900s. Two other constants in Iranian culture have been religion and nationalism. In examining the role of religion in Iranian culture, I will focus on the ways in which the use of religion as a political ideology by the Islamic Republic state have influenced religiosity among the state’s subjects. How has popular Islam – that is, the Islam of the people, and not the Islam of the state – fared under the Islamic Republic? A similar question can be asked about nationalism, not so much as an ideology but more as a sense of national belonging and a rough guide to civic and political culture. The compound outcome of these cultural traits has been a growing normative chasm between the culturally accented Islamic Republic state on the one hand and Iranian society on the other. To use an overused but nevertheless accurate cliché, Iranian society is highly complex and complicated, with multiple layers of identity that both overlap and contradict each other. The state is far from alone in its inability to fully grasp this multilayered complexity of society. Academics and others observing from the outside, as well as those experiencing its disorienting processes from within, also have difficulties understanding the country’s dizzying social dynamics and explaining what they mean.