By tightening curbs on women's rights, President Ebrahim Raisi has boosted his hardline credentials and possibly his prospects of becoming Iran's Supreme Leader, even at the cost of provoking mass protests and driving a wedge between many Iranians and the ruling elite, three analysts and a pro-reform official said.
A year after Raisi's election marked the end of what many Iranians recall as more pragmatic, tolerant times, his government's tougher enforcement of hijab wearing in the weeks before Mahsa Amini's death in custody on Sept. 16 reflected a full reassertion of hardline influence.
