The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran emerged from a discursive struggle between two competing formations, each claiming to offer a strategy for societal revitalization. This study examines why Pahlavist discourse, despite extensive media mobilization and top-down modernization during the final two decades of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s rule, failed to consolidate its hegemony and instead contributed to the emergence of political Islam. Employing a directed qualitative methodology and Stuart Hall’s theory of representation, the study analyzes representations of the White Revolution in the newspapers *Ettela’at* and *Kayhan* and their periodicals from 1961 to 1979, as well as their articulation within political Islam.The study argues that Pahlavist discourse constructed the White Revolution as an inevitable necessity compatible with Islamic legitimacy and modern rationality through three strategies: the appropriation of Islam by distinguishing “authentic” Islam from “superstitious” Islam; the scientization of reform by presenting state-led transformations as rational and scientifically grounded; and dehistoricization by obscuring their historical and political contingencies. Yet these strategies failed to secure discursive hegemony because of internal contradictions, particularly between the regime’s anti-corruption claims and corruption within the state apparatus, and between its discourse of international integration and dependence on the West, especially after the 1953 coup. These contradictions created discursive fissures that facilitated political Islam, notably through the construction of a binary between revolutionary and state Islam and the articulation of Pahlavism as incompatible with social justice and national independence.