Over the last decade, they have refocused their media production on depicting how the guards protected Iran from outside aggression, moving religious symbols to the background. With the violence in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, the advent of the Islamic State and the deterioration of the Syrian civil war, a common refrain among Iranians became: “Without the Sepah” — the way the guard is referred to in Persian — “in Damascus, ISIS would be in Tehran.”

These rebranding efforts have included a reinterpretation of the Islamic Republic’s past. The guards recently opened a vast museum in Tehran that narrates the story of the Iran-Iraq war as a triumph of Persian nationalism; in the past, that story had been told as a heroic tale that valorized the soldiers of the war as emulating religious figures such as Imam Hussein, the grandson of prophet Mohammad and the third Shia imam.

One wing of the museum features a large map of the ancient Persian Empire, ruling stretches of Asia. As the visitor continues through the exhibition, Iran’s territory shrinks; the country’s contemporary size appears small in comparison to the glorified empire painted on the wall. The message is clear: Leaders of previous Iranian kingdoms had recklessly given away territory, thinking more about filling their own pockets than about the well-being of the nation. When the Islamic Republic was attacked by the Iraqi army, backed by the West, it fought to maintain Iran’s borders, and, by extension, the nation’s dignity as an ancient civilization.

Instead of celebrating martyrs — like the ubiquitous yet rarely visited martyrs museums that dot the country — this museum offers a narrative of nationalism, dignity and pride. “We got Iran back from the hold of Western powers; we retook control of our country,” said Fatemeh, a museum employee and member of the Basij, who spoke on the condition that I use only her first name .

To draw new audiences, the museum, located on the hilltops of north-central Tehran, has invited artists to create exhibitions and installments, courting a more cosmopolitan audience. the very people the martyrs museums pushed away for decades. The museum’s park offers free access to anyone wanting to escape Tehran’s growing expanses of concrete. In the spring and summer, families picnic on the grounds. And it appears to be a success: During my visits, it was always crowded.

Wanting to capture young audiences on social media, the Revolutionary Guards has also invested heavily in music videos that celebrate the Islamic Republic’s armed forces as the defenders of the independence and dignity of an ancient civilization.

The most expensive music video ever produced in Iran — at $385,000 — tells the true story of the downing of an Iran Air passenger flight by an American warship in the Persian Gulf. Intercut with the attack are scenes of a group of multiethnic and multiracial Iranian men, dressed in the style of paramilitary Basijis, marching toward the ship with nothing but the Iranian flag as their weapon. They sing of defending the nation from foreign aggression as the Persian mythical heroes of “Shahnameh,” or “Book of Kings," did. The song’s lyrics refer only to pre-Islamic Persian history, with no references at all to Islam.