The complexity and grave nature of urban problems in the Tehran metropolis - stemming primarily from centralization, institutional conflicts, the dependence of urban management on unsustainable financial resources, and weak citizen participation - have confronted policy-making in this city with serious challenges. This study aims to analyze Tehran's urban policy-making process across three stages - agenda-setting, formulation and decision-making, and implementation and evaluation - and to explain the status of each stage within a five-stream framework. The research adopted a qualitative approach and a critical paradigm. Data were collected through the review of National Policy Statement and documents and semi-structured interviews with 12 urban experts, managers, and policymakers, and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis in a combined deductive-inductive manner. The analysis yielded 99 codes, 19 organizing themes, and 3 overarching themes. Mapping the themes onto the five-stream framework of Howlett et al. revealed that, in the agenda-setting stage, the political stream and the political economy of “sell-the-city” dominate the problem stream, while the process stream is almost absent; in the formulation and decision-making stage, the process stream suffers from disjuncture; and in the implementation and evaluation stage, the program stream is disrupted by instability of objectives, weak enforcement of laws, and the absence of a feedback loop. Accordingly, a pattern of the status of streams across the three stages is presented, and operational recommendations are proposed for enhancing urban governance in Tehran.