This is the danger of a violent regime change....there are enemy forces waiting to take advantage of the ensuing chaos. As a matter of fact Saddam launched the Iraqi invasion during the same time. The only sure way was to slowly reform...as they did after Masha Amini's uprising, in regards to hijab.
Reform isn’t going to change the currency free fall.
Reform isn’t going to bring down inflation
Reform isn’t going to fix lack of jobs for the youth
Reform isn’t going to raise people up from poverty
As long as Iran remains shut off the world and under crippling sanctions these riots will happen every year or so.
The whole point of the nuclear program was leverage, leverage to use while resisting sanctions to get the U.S. to strike a fair deal and allow Iran back into world integration. Without that leverage U.S. could just sanction Iran and wait for eventual collapse, leverage was there to keep the threat of going nuclear a real credible threat.
Somewhere along the way the leadership forgot that and wanted to just stay under sanctions to feed the wealthy who profited from it and keep Iran from opening up to US influence that could weaken the leadership.
This leadership chose to keep negotiations only on nuclear issue, while U.S. wanted comprehensive agreement. They also choose to waste away their nuclear leverage to Israeli assassinations and sabotage and finally overt action.
In the end they overplayed their hand and gave too much time for their enemies to think of different ways to remove their leverage.
Now Iran has no enrichment
Heavily damaged nuclear facilities
Same broken and dying economy.
Too late for reform. It’s capitulation or soft revolution at this rate.