Why am I unable to disable Read Out Protection from within my source code?

[arnold_w]

I am working with the STM32F446 microcontroller and I want embed the option bytes into my source code so I wrote the following and call it first thing in main():

static FLASH_OBProgramInitTypeDef __attribute__((aligned(4))) CORRECT_OPTION_BYTES = {
    0,                                            // OptionType
    OB_WRPSTATE_DISABLE,                          // WRPState  
    0xFF,                                         // WRPSector 
    FLASH_BANK_1,                                 // Banks     
    OB_RDP_LEVEL_0,                               // RDPLevel  
    OB_BOR_LEVEL3,                                // BORLevel  
    OB_IWDG_SW | OB_STOP_NO_RST | OB_STDBY_NO_RST // USERConfig
};
 
 
void updateOptionBytesIfNecessary() {
    FLASH_OBProgramInitTypeDef __attribute__((aligned(4))) currentOptionBytes;
    HAL_FLASHEx_OBGetConfig( &currentOptionBytes);
 
    CORRECT_OPTION_BYTES.OptionType = 0;
    if ((currentOptionBytes.WRPState  != CORRECT_OPTION_BYTES.WRPState) ||
        (currentOptionBytes.WRPSector != CORRECT_OPTION_BYTES.WRPSector)) {
        CORRECT_OPTION_BYTES.OptionType |= OPTIONBYTE_WRP;
    }
 
    if (currentOptionBytes.RDPLevel != CORRECT_OPTION_BYTES.RDPLevel) {
        CORRECT_OPTION_BYTES.OptionType |= OPTIONBYTE_RDP;
        logDebugNullTermString(0, 0, " RDP ");
    }
 
    if (currentOptionBytes.USERConfig != CORRECT_OPTION_BYTES.USERConfig) {
        CORRECT_OPTION_BYTES.OptionType |= OPTIONBYTE_USER;
    }
 
    if (currentOptionBytes.BORLevel != CORRECT_OPTION_BYTES.BORLevel) {
        CORRECT_OPTION_BYTES.OptionType |= OPTIONBYTE_BOR;
    }
 
    if (CORRECT_OPTION_BYTES.OptionType != 0) {
        if (HAL_FLASH_OB_Unlock() != HAL_OK) {
            // Error!
        }
        if (HAL_FLASHEx_OBProgram(&CORRECT_OPTION_BYTES) != HAL_OK) {
            // Error!
        }
        HAL_FLASH_OB_Launch();
        HAL_FLASH_OB_Lock();
    }
}

When I use STM32 ST-Link Utility to fiddle with the option bytes, I find that the code above works great for everything except if I change the Read Out Protection to level 1 or 2. Whenever I change the Read Out Protection to level 1 or 2, the microcontroller doesn't seem to execute properly afterwards (I don't get a welcome message over my UART) but I can still connect with STM32 ST-Link Utility to find out that the Read Out Protection hasn't changed. Does anybody know what's wrong with my code?