Iranian celebrity chef Navab Ebrahimi was arrested without explanation in Tehran on Wednesday and carted off to its notorious Evin Prison, one of the world’s most hideous dungeons.
Police reportedly shut down his cafe in Tehran soon after his arrest.
Ebrahimi’s fans believe the regime arrested him because he dared to make fun of the “martyred” Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the terrorist mastermind liquidated by a U.S. airstrike in Iraq on January 3, 2020.
Ebrahimi’s popular Instagram account mysteriously disappeared after he was arrested, even though it had 2.7 million followers, but one of his final posts was a recipe for Persian cutlets. This seems innocuous at first glance, but as the UK Guardian explained on Thursday, posting photos of cutlets on the anniversary of his death has become a coded message of defiance against the brutal regime he served, a bit like the way Chinese dissidents enjoy mocking corpulent dictator Xi Jinping by posting photos of Winnie-the-Pooh.
The cutlets in question are very small pieces of minced meat. Soleimani was killed by a direct hit from a drone-launched missile while he was plotting terrorist attacks against Americans in Iraq. The symbolism of the cutlet mockery is not subtle.
Ebrahimi’s fans believe his decision to post a cutlet recipe on January 3, 2023, meant he was joining the dissidents in mocking Soleimani, who has been sainted by the regime, his death commemorated with a dark and brutal state-mandated holiday blood ritual. Regime forces whip citizens into mandatory demonstrations against the Western world on January 3, while dissidents post their cutlet photos – and bolder dissenters burn photos of Soleimani.
This year’s Soleimani festival is especially tense because of the ongoing Mahsa Amini uprising, prompted by the death of a young Kurdish woman at the hands of the regime’s thuggish “morality police” in September for allegedly wearing her headscarf improperly. Iranians furious at their ugly government for Amini’s killing are not disposed to worship a fallen terrorist whose business was spreading Iranian oppression across the Middle East, while impoverished citizens chafe at saluting a man who spent much of his career handing bags of Iranian cash to foreign insurgents.
The Iranian regime proceeded with various Soleimani commemorative activities this week, including a fiery speech from President Ebrahim Raisi threatening “retaliation” against the United States for Soleimani’s death; an Iranian state newspaper publishing the names and photos of 51 Americans allegedly involved in the strike against Soleimani, clearly targeting them for assassination; an Iranian court issuing an arrest warrant on Friday for former U.S. President Donald Trump, who ordered the strike; and some Iranian henchmen in Syria firing two rockets at a U.S. military base, apparently harming no one and damaging nothing.
Another Iranian celebrity chef named Mehrshad Shahidi was murdered by the Iranian regime in October for daring to join the Amini protests.
Shahidi’s family said he was killed with blows to the head from police batons after he was arrested, but they were pressured by Iranian officials to say he died from a heart attack – a common tactic employed by the regime against innocent people in its custody, including Mahsa Amini, whose family was pressured to say she coincidentally died from a chronic health problem while in custody. Mehrshad Shahidi was one day shy of his 20th birthday at the time of his death.
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