Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has once again demonstrated his populist flair.

"If you force something good, you will ruin it," the former Iranian president said earlier this month.

He, who actually comes from the camp of conservative hardliners and was notorious for shrill tones, spoke about the veil that women in his country have to cover their hair with.

The overwhelming majority of people think hijab is a good thing, Ahmadinejad said.

But almost all Iranians are against imposing the veil on society.

Christopher Ehrhardt

Correspondent for the Arab countries based in Beirut.

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It is possible that the former president, who has long since been pushed out of the center of power in the "Islamic Republic", had his political advancement in mind as well as a relaxation of strict dress codes.

But it speaks volumes about the nerve he was aiming at: the Iranian population's weariness with the encroaching, paternalistic state, the arbitrariness and brutality of the security forces and the impunity with which they can go about their work.

How sensitive this nerve is is shown by the protests that have shaken the country in waves since mid-September.

The trigger was the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Dschina Amini, who died under suspicious circumstances – in the custody of the moral police, recruited from among the ranks of religious zealots.

Authorities initially claimed she died of a heart attack.

Her family said she was beaten.

The case mobilized large parts of Iranian society: women, university students, traders from the bazaars, Iranians already impoverished and Iranians on the way to poverty.

The demonstrations spread from the capital Tehran to the province.

Kurds and Baloch reject the state

It is unclear whether further waves of protests will soon roll across the country, seriously shaking the regime.

Or whether the protests will subside.

The situation for the regime in the periphery is particularly delicate, according to Iranian and Western experts.

Things are seething at the edges of the country: in the Kurdish north-west as well as in the south-east in the province of Sistan and Balochistan, which borders on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"In the Kurdish regions and in Balochistan, the revolt still has a religious and an ethnic component," explains Walter Posch, an Iran expert from the National Defense Academy in Vienna.

"The regime there is in serious trouble that should not be underestimated."

There it is not only about the brutal enforcement of the rules of the Shiite regime, but also about the systemic discrimination of the local population, who follow the Sunni orientation of Islam.

Sunnis have no connections in the Shia-dominated security apparatus, which is important in dictatorships should family members get into trouble.

They also have fewer chances of employment in the civil service, the largest employer in the economically struggling country.

The promise of past governments to take account of the diversity of population groups with corresponding civil rights has also not been fulfilled.

For many Kurds, Mahsa Amini's death in her hometown of Saqqez was also evidence of being treated as second-class Iranians - Kurds and Sunnis.

The young woman came from a prominent Kurdish family, from which many religious scholars come.