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Authorities in Tehran will no longer arrest people for breaches of Islamic codes, the Iranian capital’s police chief said Wednesday, a sign of easing social strictures under relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani.

Echoing a similar shift in Saudi Arabia, Iran’s main regional rival, Brig. Gen. Hossein Rahimi said police would change tactics in enforcing Islamic values, after decades of fines, detentions and even lashings for infractions as minor as women wearing nail polish, heavy makeup or tying their headscarves too loosely. Iranian women have been obliged to wear headscarves in public since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which melded government with Islam.

“Based on a society-oriented, educational approach, the police will not arrest those who don’t respect Islamic values,” Gen. Rahimi said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. “It will instead educate them.”

The announcement appeared to mark a significant change in how police in Tehran address Islamic mores. But given the long and harsh history of enforcement, many Iranians responded on social media with skepticism and demands for a more precise definition of the Islamic values that won’t result in arrests. “They’re probably short of detention cells,” one Iranian tweeted.

Others cheered the shift. “Education instead of detention. This is a victory for women!” tweeted one man identifying himself as Masoud Razi. “People, know your power.”

Some observers say the true measure of Tehran’s intent will be in its execution of the announced looser stance, noting that Iranian leaders, including Mr. Rouhani, have articulated relaxations of enforcement in the past without following through. Mr. Rouhani in 2015 told a gathering of police officials that enforcing Islamic law wasn’t their job, but arrests of people for infractions relating to Islamic values didn’t stop.

Police in Tehran arrested more than 200 people last week for violating Islamic values by allegedly dancing and drinking in celebration of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior Iran analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, said Wednesday’s announcement was based on a calculation that the system needed to “bend a little without breaking” to appeal to a rising young middle class.

“The intention could be there, genuine or not, to not want to enforce a strict interpretation of Islamic law in Iran,” he said. “But even those who harbor a genuine desire for reform have often lacked the political capability to follow through.”

The announced move is in line with a liberalization taking place in some other parts of the Middle East, including in Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia, Shiite Iran’s main adversary for regional influence and power. Saudi authorities last year stripped religious police of their power to arrest people. King Salman decreed in September that women be allowed to drive starting next year, and a decadeslong ban on cinemas was lifted earlier this month. Those actions have been popular domestically, especially among the kingdom’s large population of young people.

In some other majority-Muslim states, meanwhile, calls for stricter rules protecting Islamic sensibilities are growing. Religious activists besieged Pakistan’s capital late last month and secured promises from the government to more strictly implement anti-blasphemy laws. In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Islamic country, hard-line Islamic groups are promoting new, Shariah-based laws, backed by a popular mood that has become more religiously conservative.

In Iran, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was responsible for enforcing Islamic values in the early years after the revolution. That role was later taken over by the police, who patrolled Tehran in vans and watched for violations in public squares, shopping centers and other highly trafficked areas.

Young Iranians in particular have pushed fiercely for a relaxation of rules on headscarves and other appearance-related restrictions in recent years. Their votes helped propel Mr. Rouhani into office in 2013 and to a second four-year term in an election in May. About 40% of Iran’s population of roughly 82 million is under 25 years old.

“The morality police is simply unable to contain and control the vibrant Iranian youth, which is generally more liberal and secular than the previous generation,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran Project director at the International Crisis Group.

He suggested it was no coincidence that the move in the capital comes as Iran faces mounting political challenges from abroad. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has slapped new sanctions on Iranians connected to the country’s ballistic-missile program, which the U.S. and its allies see as a threat to Israel. Mr. Trump has also refused to certify Iran’s compliance with the terms of its Obama-era nuclear deal, which gave it relief from international sanctions that had hampered its economy.

“The Rouhani administration understands that the less discontent there is within the society, the less security risks Iran would face at home amidst more pressure from the Trump administration,” Mr. Vaez said.

Iranians have become more daring, and increasingly Western, in their wardrobe choices, and the state has until now shown little willingness to bend in response. Just last year, Tehran’s then police chief, Brig. Gen. Hossein Sajedinia, announced the deployment of 7,000 undercover morality police. Numerous female models were later arrested for posing on Instagram without headscarves, according to local media reports, as police launched a new initiative to enforce dress codes beyond the street.

Gen. Rahimi took over as police chief in August, around the same time Tehran’s city council elected a reformist mayor, Mohammad Ali Najafi, to succeed a series of two hard-liners. The mayor, however, has no oversight over Tehran’s police, which report to the Ministry of Interior. It wasn’t clear what role, if any, Mr. Rouhani had in the relaxation of enforcement under Gen. Rahimi.

Gen. Rahimi said the police had already held 121 educational sessions for almost 8,000 people, but didn’t say which Islamic values they were alleged to have violated.