Following the Islamic Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran has pursued a distinct approach to regional policy that departs from dominant materialist and geopolitically driven models of foreign policy. Rather than relying solely on calculations of power and interest, Iran’s regional engagement has been deeply shaped by normative, ideological, and identity-based principles rooted in the revolutionary worldview. such an ideationally driven approach has consistently encountered a range of structural and discursive challenges that constrain its effective realization. The purpose of this article is to provide a theoretical analysis of the challenges facing the regional policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran from the perspective of ideational politics. Accordingly, the central research question asks: How and at what levels do the challenges of Iran’s regional policy impose limitations on its ideational politics? In response, the study conceptualizes ideational politics as an idea-centered and norm-oriented framework of foreign policy analysis and examines the challenges confronting Iran’s regional policy across two analytical levels. At the regional level, Saudi Arabia’s Salafi-oriented Islamism, Turkey’s neo-Ottoman identity project, and the existential antagonism of the Zionist regime toward the Islamic Republic of Iran are analyzed as key sites of ideological and strategic contestation. At the supra-regional level, the penetration of Western liberal-democratic discourse, alongside the mechanisms of Iranophobia and Shiaphobia, is examined as part of broader efforts to contain and undermine Iran’s normative role in the regional order. This study adopts an analytical–interpretive approach and relies on library-based research and academic sources for data collection.