One of the serious challenges in academic studies of Iran’s pre-modern past and contemporary history has been – and continues to be – the imposition of modern interpretations on phenomena, events, individuals, political movements, texts, and the very nature of states. This issue has resulted in nothing but the reduction of modern concepts, the distortion of their true substance, or the production of misleading interpretations of the phenomena under examination. Terms such as secular, secularization, and secularism are among the concepts that have been applied to the Pahlavi state, as well as to certain individuals and political parties in contemporary Iranian history, without the provision of precise definitions or a rigorous academic examination of the relationship between these concepts and the entities to which they are attributed, including the Pahlavi state itself. The central question of the present paper is whether the Pahlavi state can be regarded as a secular state. The findings of the study indicate that the Pahlavi state cannot be described as secular in the modern sense of the term; rather, only in a minimal, extremely limited, and defective sense – similar to other modern authoritarian states in the Middle East – did it exhibit certain strands of secular policy, shaped by Iran’s specific historical, social, and cultural characteristics. Adopting a descriptive-analytical approach with critical orientations, the paper examines the dimensions of secular policy within this state while also identifying and analyzing four of its non-secular characteristics.