Iranian authorities have accused a prominent blogger of being an Israeli spy due to his social media criticism of the country’s oppressive leadership.

Hossein Shanbehzadeh, known for his satirical takes on the government’s beliefs, was arrested on Tuesday by security forces in the northwestern city of Ardabil. Within 24 hours and before being granted access to legal counsel, the judiciary claimed Shanbehzadeh maintained covert connections to Israel’s Mossad and had a history of insulting Shia imams, according to Iran International.

These allegations are reportedly linked to a single incident when Shanbehzadeh authored a dot as a mocking response to a tweet from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The perceived “insolence” toward Khamenei proved too much for the regime’s hardline enforcers, considering the dot comment got more engagement than the ruling cleric’s original post.

Critics have questioned how a blogger without access to any classified information could possibly be working for Israel’s Mossad. Even famed chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov joined the fray by responding to news of Shanbehzadeh’s plight with a solitary dot on X, mirroring the blogger’s original Khamenei troll.

With protests continuing to simmer against the regime’s political and economic repression, Shanbehzadeh’s arrest appears clearly aimed at those whose reach and ability to galvanize dissent. Only last year did the regime finally exonerate Maziar Ebrahimi, an Iranian businessman falsely accused of spying for Israel. Ebrahimi has been on record detailing how he was brutally tortured into a sham confession about assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists in 2012.