Iran warned Paris on Wednesday that it would respond to the publication of “offensive” caricatures of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, AFP reported.

On Wednesday, the satirical weekly published dozens of caricatures of Khamenei, the Islamic Republic’s highest religious and political figure.

The cartoons were selected in a competition launched in December as protests intensified in Iran following the death in custody on September 16 of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurdish woman arrested for violating the country’s strict dress code.

“The offensive and obscene act of the French publication, which published caricatures of the religious and political authorities, will not go without an effective and firm response,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Twitter.

“We will not allow the French government to cross the line,” he added.

In December, Charlie Hebdo explained that Khamenei’s “international caricature contest” was aimed at supporting “Iranians fighting for their freedom.”

Authorities say hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed and thousands arrested during what they broadly call the “unrest”. They accuse foreign states and opposition groups of inciting the riots.

Wednesday’s edition of Charlie Hebdo magazine contained several sexually explicit cartoons depicting Ayatollah Khamenei and other Iranian clerics, while other cartoons condemned the use of the death penalty as an intimidation tactic against protesters.

“This was a way to show our support for the Iranian people who are risking their lives to defend their freedom from the theocracy that has oppressed them since 1979,” editor Laurent Sourisseau, known as Rees, said in an editorial.