The hybrid political system of Iran creates political opportunities for advocacy NGOs depending on the political ideology of the ruling elite, the issue of a policy domain, and the level of government. Variations in these factors create fundamentally different types of policy networks, which dynamically function as sub-polities of the political regime. They provide advocacy NGOs with different constraints and opportunities regarding their different structures, which are characterised by the composition of actors, the interrelations between them, and the institutions. In this study, the argument is that the public policy arena of Iran is differentiated, and accordingly, policy networks vary from one area to another, and therefore, the agency of advocacy NGOs in them vary. This argument is sustained by case studies of policy networks at provincial and national levels, in the women-rights and environmental policy domains, and across the politically liberal government of Khatami (1997-2005) and the conservative government of Ahmadinejad (2005-2013). The study suggests that other hybrid regimes should be considered like Iran as well: differentiated, rather than monoliths. Therefore, we might expect similar variations in the scope of advocacy NGOs within hybrid regimes.