A 70-year-old Iranian man's dance at a market went viral. Then came the arrests.

• Iranian authorities were apparently scared of a viral video.
• The clip shows a 70-year-old man dancing and singing in the street.

The Instagram video seems harmless.

An Iranian man in a white suit, identified by the New York Times as 70-year-old market stall owner Sadegh Bana Motejaded, dances in the street and sings a folk song as a group of men around him clap and sing along.

"Oh, oh, oh, oh," they cheer to Motejaded's song.

But the clip — later remixed with dance beats and shared millions of times as part of a viral Iranian dance craze — has apparently spooked Iranian authorities.

According to media reports, Iranian officials in Rasht, Iran, came down hard on Bana Motejaded and the other men featured in the video, fearing the spontaneous dancing would spark larger protests against the authoritarian regime.

Authorities said the viral video violated their Islamic rules forbidding public dancing, according to the Financial Times.

Bana Motejaded's Instagram account was pulled down, FT reported.

His account instead sported the image of the Iranian judiciary along with a note that the account had been "shut down for creating criminal content" and that the person responsible had been "dealt with," according to the New York Times.

The New York Times reported that a dozen men who appeared in the video were arrested. One anonymous source told the New York Times that the men were blindfolded, beaten, and forced to promise never to dance or sing in public again.

But the crackdown seems to have backfired.

Iranians began posting videos of their own mimicking Bana Motejaded's dance moves in solidarity and conservative allies of the government criticized the men's arrests.

"How have we managed to turn the dancing and singing of fish sellers into an act of resistance?" newspaper Farhikhtegan wrote, according to a translation by the Financial Times.

Eventually, Iranian authorities reversed course and restored Bana Motejaded's account. He now says he was never arrested, according to Radio Free Europe.

The DJ behind the remix of Bana Motejaded's song says joining in on the craze is now the exact thing the regime feared: a small act of rebellion.

"It's obvious that joining this dance trend sends a strong message," Mohammad Aghapour told the New York Times. "It's a way of protesting and demanding our freedom and happiness."