Please excuse my ignorance on the subject mate, can you elaborate on this.
Also, I heard on a podcast (not sure which) that the opinion regarding 'change' differs across locations, such as rural or suburban. Is that correct?
Just pure physiognomy ... Islamic Republic as a whole is against beauty and celebrates the culture of death more than life (hence they love the word Shahid which means martyr).
to an average foreigner, all the coverage they've seen of Iran for years has been war, terror, women in black clothing, ugly degenrate-looking men representing Iran globally...whereas the average Iranian looks and is culturally a million times closer to Nazanin, then those who officially represent them under the occupation flag.
No wonder the main slogan of the protests are: Woman, Life, Freedom ....3 things that aren't in Islamic Republic occupied Iran.
as for the bolded part, this may have been true in protests of many years ago, but this time you have protests even in small towns with population of fewer than 100k especially in the North and the West of Iran.
Culturally South of Iran has always been more religious and conservative, however some of the most intense protests (with the highest death casualties) have been happening in Balochistan which is Iran's poorest region and also one of the most religious.
as usual Regime will try to spin them as separatists (them and Kurds), but they can't do it in age of social media since you can CLEARLY hear the chants that translate to:
"from Kurdistan (north west of country) to Balochistan (south east of the country), my life is for Iran"
