Iran’s Islamic Revolution occurred in a society characterised by despotic modernisation under the aegis of a rampant oil state. Urban masses involved in the revolutionary movement have done so from a dual perspective: on the one hand, political freedom and, on the other, access to the modernity defined in terms of consumption. It was when the feeling of the failure of the movement took precedence that the modernising will turned the opposite, saying that it was impacting a modernity which had already declined to act. Religious despotism, which was created just two years after the revolution, is the result of intolerant modernisation and is itself a modern phenomenon.