Helmet Solution

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.