Writer Reza Aslan's tweet about actress Scarlett Johansson and Israeli company SodaStream. Photo: Petra Marquardt-Bigman/Twitter.

Iranian-American writer and academic, Reza Aslan, compared Israeli company SodaStream to Adolf Hitler and implied that its newly minted spokesperson, actress Scarlett Johansson, was a Nazi supporter in a tweet on Friday afternoon that he quickly deleted.

“Scarlett Johansson: Adolf is committed to building a bridge to peace between Germany and Poland,” Aslan wrote, linking to a Huffington Post article in which the actress responds to critics of her representation of the soda machine maker.

“SodaStream is a company that is not only committed to the environment but to building a bridge to peace between Israel and Palestine,” Johansson said in a statement, which Aslan then modified to make his point. The company is “supporting neighbors working alongside each other, receiving equal pay, equal benefits and equal rights,” she said further. “That is what is happening in their Ma’ale Adumim factory every working day.”

SodaStream says it employs 550 Palestinian Arabs who are afforded the same benefits as Israeli workers at its Ma’ale Adumim plant in the West Bank.

Although Aslan’s comment was quickly deleted from his account, a screenshot, pictured above, was captured by Algemeiner blogger Petra Marquardt-Bigman. “Oh well, @rezaaslan was apparently embarrassed enough to delete the tweet – but I have a screenshot,” Marquardt-Bigman tweeted.

Aslan made headlines last year  when he responded indignantly to a Fox News reporter who asked him why, as a Muslim, he had written a book about Jesus.

“Well, to be clear, I am a scholar of religions with four degrees including one in the New Testament and fluency in Biblical Greek, who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades, who also just happens to be a Muslim. So, it is not that I am just some Muslim writing about Jesus, I am an expert with a PhD in the history of religions,” he said at the time.