Alexis de Tocqueville once said that the most dangerous moment for a bad regime was the moment it tried to reform itself. Corrupt authoritarian regimes don't adapt well, and when they begin to loosen their grip or accommodate popular unrest, those early cracks can crumble the foundations of their rule. We saw this with glasnost and perestroika in the old USSR.
We may be seeing it in Iran today. The Attorney General of Iran has said that they are abolishing the "Morality Police" who enforced the hijab and other aspects of the dress code. The problem is that the Judicial ministry does not control the Morality Police, the Interior Ministry does. This is potentially the precise form of inter-regime schism that often leads to regime collapse. As a segment of the Iranian government begins to accede to the the protests, if the government as a whole does not agree, then those schisms create pressures that the continuing protest movement can exploit.
While the wearing of the hijab is the spark, the kindling that turned these protests into an inferno is years of economic mismanagement and corruption. There was also a poor Covid response and Iran's isolation from global society. Cosmetic changes in how the hijab law is enforced are unlikely to end the protests; in fact a taste of success could accelerate them.
Inshallah.
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