 The Iranian government promptly responded to the events by temporarily shutting down the "Iran" newspaper, arresting the cartoonist Mana Neyestani, who is himself an ethnic Azeri Türk, and the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Mehrdad Ghasemfar.It further accused outside forces of "playing the nationalistic card".Emad Afrough, head of the Majlis Cultural Commission at the time, said that pan-Turkists were involved in creating the tensions.