Existing scholarship narrates Iran’s 1930s unveiling campaign (kashf-i hijab) as a European-inspired ban on traditional and Islamic dress codes, decreed by Reza Shah, and imposed forcibly on all women. Through a reinterpretation of Persian-language primary sources, as well as comparisons with Republican Turkey, this paper calls for a revision to the above narrative. To begin, pre-modern veiling (hijab) referred ambiguously to a set of diverse and at times contradictory discourses and practices. Consequently, the modern discourse critical of “traditional” veiling had at least two basic strands and arguments. One was secular and anti-clerical, while the other advocated a modern Islamic and Iranian hijab. This paper’s reinterpretation of numerous 1930s official documents will demonstrate that, contrary to existing interpretations, Iran’s kashf-i hijab campaign was conceived to be genuinely Islamic and Iranian. Second, it will be shown that kashf-i hijab was neither decreed by Reza Shah nor legislated by the Iranian parliament. Instead, it consisted of a series of directives originating in the Ministry of Education and implemented by the Ministry of the Interior. Third, the project was aimed to be educational, non-coercive, and enforced selectively. It began by requiring female public school teachers and students and the wives of government officials to attend carefully staged gatherings in modern dress and without the chador (head-to-toe covering). Official declarations presented this as a return to ancient Iranian traditions, also in line with the shari’a, which technically allowed women’s faces to remain uncovered. While forcible measures were used against some women, official documents emphasized non-coercive implementation, recommending flexibility and the consideration of diverse regional, social, and religious sensibilities. Finally, the paper will reinterpret contemporary high clerics’ lack of opposition to kashf-i hijab as their tacit acceptance of its core proposal, i.e. the uncovering of women’s faces as Islamic. This became more explicit in the writings of 1960s-1970s Islamic modernists, such as Ayatollah Motahhari. Thus, the core thrust of the 1930s “unveiling” became adopted as Islamic “veiling” in post-revolutionary Iran.