A celebrity chef specialising in Persian cooking has been jailed in Iran – because he posted details of a recipe for cutlets on the third anniversary of the US killing of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani.

This was reportedly regarded as disrespectful and a serious breach, for which he has now been locked up in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran.

Navab Ebrahimi has a massive 2.7 million followers on Instagram, where he posts recipes and talks about Persian cooking.

But he was apparently caught out because critics of the government had posted images of cutlets on the anniversary of Soleimani’s death in an apparent reference to his killing in a US drone strike in Iraq.

One Twitter user wrote: “The mullahs clearly don’t mind exhibiting their insanity to the world.

“They’ve arrested Navab Ebrahimi, an Instagram chef, for sharing the recipe for #Kotlet (name given to the state Soleimani was left in after death).”

The New York Centre for Human Rights, which monitors the situation in Iran, said: “Chef and influencer Navab Ebrahimi has been arrested in Tehran.

“Social media users speculated that his arrest had something to do with his Instagram story.”

And Iranian filmmaker and photographer Nik Yousefi, who was also arrested in October, wrote on Twitter that Ebrahimi had been arrested and his cafe in Tehran, Noj, shut down.