In response to a number of acid attacks on women in the city of Esfahan, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has ordered the Interior Ministry, Intelligence Ministry and Justice Ministry to pursue the case. Tehran's Friday Prayer leader Ayatollah Mohadi Kermani has also said that the attackers must be given the “maximum punishment.”
Protests erupted in Esfahan and the capital Tehran over the attacks, which left a number of young women disfigured. Some at these protests blamed the authorities for not protecting women from violence and supporting legislation that offers legal protection to vigilante "vice groups" engaged in the Islamic teaching of “enjoining good and forbidding wrong.”