Cultural policy is a modern concept expanded from the idea of social citizenship. The state, market, and civil organizations such as municipalities are the main institutions that intervene in setting cultural policies. Municipalities in Iran are considered as state organizations. Tehran municipality has a distinctive political status that makes it an influential cultural force who carries the duty of implementing cultural policies within urban life. The current research applies Foucault’s critical discourse analysis for the study of the cultural policies under Gholamhossein Karbaschi (1368-1377/1990-1998) to answer the question of “what were the discursive characteristics of Tehran municipality’s cultural policies in this period and how did they reflect the social context of the time?”. Having distinguished three minor discourses of state cultural policies and poverty eradication as part of the revolutionary discourse, the prospect for the globalized city and confrontation with the market cultural policies referred to as ‘cultural invasion’, in addition to the national-cultural identity and civil-communicative cultural policies, the post-war Tehran municipality can be characterized by the ideas of modernization, construction, and development. Modernization defines management as a top-down process, mainly set in motion by the will-power of technocrats; powerful managers who are supported by the structure, pay the least attention to the socio-cultural contexts, and demonstrate restricted field management. Such a management method and understanding of the city ends in a type of authoritative or market-based cultural policy that is mainly defined with putting culture only in second place in relation to the market and politics.