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.”

These vice groups, often organized around Ansar-e Hezbollah, have threatened that if the administration does not take action to enforce hijab laws, they will take to the streets and enforce it themselves, despite hijab-law enforcement falling under the jurisdiction of the police and not the administration. Iranian authorities have claimed that Ansar-e Hezbollah or other vice groups were not involved in the attacks, and a number of officials have suggested the violence was the work of “anti-social” individuals.

During an Oct. 22 trip to Zanjani, Rouhani condemned those who believe that “enjoining good and forbidding wrong” is their duty alone, and use the teaching as a partisan tool. He said it should be used to “bring society closer together [rather than] to create separation and divisions,” and asked parliament to consider wording the law in a manner that would “create more unity in society.”