In spite of receiving scant scholarly attention, Construction Jihad (CJ) is considered among the Islamic Republic’s most important revolutionary organizations. Officially established on June 16, 1979, just months after the fall of the Shah and Khomeini’s triumphant return to Iran, CJ consisted of thousands of young activists who embarked upon an ambitious development campaign and spread revolutionary and Islamic values throughout the countryside. In the process, the organization transformed, modernized, and indoctrinated Iranian villages, and helped the fledgling Islamic Republic consolidate power against numerous domestic opponents and invading Iraqi forces. Based on one year of interviews and archival research in Iran, this paper examines the role that nationalist and religious discourse played in the mobilization of CJ’s activists immediately after the revolution and in the political factionalism that endured and intensified during the decades that followed. Relying on a textual analysis of Khomeini’s speeches, the first section of the paper argues that the revolutionary leader invoked a combination of nationalist and religious themes, as epitomized by the term “nation” (melat) as opposed to “community of believers” (ummat), and the concepts of divine struggle (jehad) and heavenly rewards (savab). This, in turn, allowed Khomeini to maximize CJ’s recruits, to reify their individual and collective identities, and to lend meaning to their actions. While the literature on post-revolutionary Iran contends that Khomeini prioritized the public interest (maslahat) over the pillars of Islam (arkan-e din) toward the end of his life, these speeches demonstrate that, from the beginning of his rule, Khomeini instrumentalized religion to further regime objectives. The remainder of the paper explores how, following Khomeini’s death, competing factions employed similar concepts and terms related to nationalism and religion to promote their respective agendas in the areas of development and politics. This section of the paper specifically traces how a fragmented network of former CJ activists in state institutions and grassroots associations appropriated the organization’s original symbols and tactics, through the ideological construct of jihadi management and culture (mudiriyat va farhang-e jehadi), to advance conservative and reformist aims. The paper contributes to and enriches the scholarship on post-revolutionary Iran, which focuses exclusively on intra-elite factionalism, by revealing how that phenomenon permeated and manifested itself at the state and societal levels.