Jackie Chan arrives at the 2017 Oscar ceremony in Los Angeles. Photo: Reuters / Mike Blake.

Iranians took to social media platforms in droves on Monday to mock the Tehran regime’s decision to fire the head of a regional TV station for showing a movie with film star Jackie Chan that included an uncensored sex scene.

از امشب به پاس زحمتهای جوان پسند #صداوسيما من شبکه #کیش را تماشا می کنم. #جکی_چان
I love you Kish channel 💝 pic.twitter.com/cPQQMPThGa

— پیمان آقایی (@Payman_aghaei) December 30, 2018

The steamy interlude in Chan’s 2010 film “The Shinjuku Incident” — described by one reviewer as “unprecedented” from an actor who is far better known for his dazzling martial arts skills — was shown on Iran’s regional Kish TV channel last week. On Monday, official Iranian news outlets reported that Aliasgari Ali Askari — the head of the Islamic Republic’s broadcaster IRIB — had ordered an investigation into the incident, pledging “to seriously deal with the offenders and report them to the relevant authorities.”

Under the strict Islamic law that prevails in Iran, movies that show physical contact between women and men are banned, as are films that show — in a country where gay men face the death penalty — same-sex relationships.

Nonetheless, thousands of posts in the Persian language on social media mocked the regime’s zealous anger over Chan’s participation in a brief sex scene. Some writers pointed out that the fury over the Chan movie came in marked contrast to the regime’s silence over last week’s bus crash involving students from Tehran’s Azad University, in which 10 people were killed and 27 injured. Students at the university are presently demanding the immediate resignation of Ali Akbar Velayati — the chairman of the university’s board of trustees and a senior foreign affairs adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — after authorities blamed the crash on a “stroke” supposedly suffered by the driver, rather than acknowledging that the buses provided to the students are aging and poorly-maintained.

“Buses overturn, ships sink, planes crash, trains derail and no-one (in authority) gets dismissed,” one Twitter user proclaimed. “But a few seconds of Jackie Chan making love…and immediately all staff in that section are sacked.”

اتوبوس چپ میکنه، هواپیما سقوط میکنه، کشتی غرق میشه، قطار از ریل خارج میشه، هیچ کسی برکنار نمیشه. چند ثانیه فیلم عشق بازی جکی چان از از صدا و سیما پخش میشه فورا تمام مسئولین اون بخش به خاطر کم کاری اخراج میشن. گویا تحریک نشدن مردم اولویت اول مسئولینه#شبکه_کیش

— AmirZz 🌙 (@aboutamirzz) December 30, 2018

Other posts used images of Chan himself to lampoon the Tehran regime’s reaction, including one of the scene that caused the initial offense.

https://twitter.com/movvasagh/status/1079773250182397952

https://twitter.com/mhdinio/status/1079768022447996928

https://twitter.com/GissuSu/status/1079468715601813505

+چرا اینکارو کردی جکی؟!
-جون جیسون من نبودم خداداد بود#شبکه_کیش #جکی_چان pic.twitter.com/ygVJCa22GX

— Sepehr Vakilinia, MD (@Dr_Gambler) December 30, 2018