In 2009 Heidari was jailed for several weeks during a crackdown following the disputed re-election of President
Mahmud Ahmadinejad In addition to imprisonment in 2009, he had been arrested in 2010 and 2012. One commentator suggests that in the Muslim world, political cartoons offer a reliable way to get a point across to people who can't read. The US-based
Committee to Protect Journalists rates Iran as the fourth most-censored country in the world, and a number of journalists remain in prison. Heidari was imprisoned in 2015 while working at
The Shahrvand, a daily newspaper owned by Iran's
Red Crescent Society, the equivalent of the
Red Cross. He was sent to Tehran’s
Evin Prison to complete a suspended one-year jail sentence imposed in 2013 for his "Blindfold" cartoon, which had been published in the
Shargh; leading to a three-month shutdown of that publication. The
Revolutionary Guards had filed a suit against Heidari for his cartoon, which showed a lineup of people, each tying a black blindfold on the next person in line. The cartoon had no caption, leading to several different interpretations. ==Cartoon responding to Paris terror attacks==