Arrests Follow Acid Attacks on Iranian Women

TEHRAN — The police arrested several men Monday in connection with at least four acid attacks on women that appear part of a violent campaign in support of new rules that aim to punish women deemed “badly veiled.”

The attacks spread panic around Iran’s old capital, Isfahan, which is also the country’s main tourist destination. The semiofficial Iranian Students’ News Agency reported that men on motorcycles had splashed acid on women through open car windows.

The episodes were widely discussed on social media in Iran as people in Isfahan said there had been more than a dozen attacks, a number not confirmed by the police but enough to prompt many women to stay indoors.

“I saw a big crowd and heard that another attack had taken place,” Morvarid Moshtahgian, 19, said in a phone interview of an attack on Wednesday. “Now when I go on the streets my body aches of fear, and when I hear a motorcycle approaching I grab my bag so I can be ready to at least protect my face.”

The attacks coincided with a law passed in Parliament on Sunday protecting those citizens who feel compelled to correct women and men who in their view do not adhere to Iran’s strict social laws. Under the Islamic obligation of “propagating virtue and preventing vice,” Parliament has officially empowered the government and private citizens to give verbal or written statements on social issues.

While such rules on dress are not new, the Interior Ministry has opposed the new law on citizens’ policing of them and is trying to alter it, the state Islamic Republic News Agency reported on Monday.

Graphic pictures provided by the Iranian Students’ News Agency show one of the victims, Soheila Jorkesh, in a hospital with her face badly burned.

Iran’s hard-line judiciary has announced that the “most serious punishment” — usually a reference to execution — awaits the perpetrators, a spokesman, Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, said Monday. He also stressed that the attacks “have nothing to do” with improper veiling.

The list of official vices in Iran is long and in many ways reflects a growing disconnect between the lifestyles of many Iranians and Iran’s Islamic laws. In addition to the strictly enforced dress codes, alcohol is banned, as are bars and clubs, sex before marriage, Western pop music and the showing of female hands in advertisements, even for soap. In reality many of these rules are widely flouted. In recent years, some clerics who have tried to correct people have been beaten up on the streets of Tehran.

Acid attacks are not as common in Iran as in India and Pakistan. In 2011, a victim of an acid attack, Ameneh Bahrami, forgave her attacker, a spurned lover, right before she was allowed under Islamic law to blind him as a result of an eye-for-an-eye ruling. Activists welcomed her decision, but now some say that laws must be tougher.

“Overall violence against women has increased because the punishments are not tough enough,” said Mojgan Faraji, a journalist. On social media, there have been calls for a protest on Wednesday in Isfahan.

Women and their families there say they are terrified. “I wear a face mask when I go on the streets,” said Niloofar Abdolhasani, 22, an architecture student. “My friends usually wear a lot of makeup, but when I saw them yesterday they were unrecognizable. We can all be victims. I hope this will be over soon.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 21, 2014,