Iran chief shuns Christiane Amanpour interview over refusal to put on headband

Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, has cancelled an interview in New York with the veteran CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour after she refused to put on a headband at his request.

In a sequence of tweets, the chief worldwide anchor of CNN mentioned that she had been scheduled to fulfill Raisi on the sidelines of the United Nations normal meeting, and had deliberate to ask him about numerous subjects, together with the outbreak of protests in Iran following the loss of life in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, who was arrested and overwhelmed by “morality police” for violating headband legal guidelines.

“This was going to be President Raisi’s first ever interview on US soil, throughout his go to to NY for UNGA. After weeks of planning and eight hours of organising translation gear, lights and cameras, we have been prepared. However no signal of President Raisi,” Amanpour tweeted on Thursday.

Forty minutes after the interview was scheduled to start, an aide approached Amanpour and informed her that Raisi was “suggesting [she] put on a headband, as a result of it’s the holy months of Muharram and Safar”, she wrote.

Amanpour mentioned she declined the request, explaining that “we’re in New York, the place there is no such thing as a regulation or custom relating to headscarves”. She added that no different Iranian president has required that she put on a headband when she interviewed them exterior Iran.

“The aide made it clear that the interview wouldn’t occur if I didn’t put on a headband. He mentioned it was ‘a matter of respect’, and referred to ‘the scenario in Iran’ – alluding to the protests sweeping the nation,” Amanpour mentioned.

“Once more, I mentioned that I couldn’t conform to this unprecedented and surprising situation.”

In consequence, Amanpour and her crew walked away and the interview didn’t happen. An image Amanpour posted on the finish of her tweets confirmed her sporting a white swimsuit whereas sitting throughout an empty chair as she awaited the Iranian president, her hair uncovered.

The British-Iranian journalist’s refusal to put on a headband was met with widespread reward on-line.

“Good for @amanpour. The times through which Iranian officers require feminine reporters and officers to put on the hejab with a purpose to get interviews and conferences ought to be over. Pressured hejab displays an antiquated and illiberal ideology not a tradition,” tweeted Karim Sadjadpour, an Iranian-American coverage analyst at Carnegie Endowment, a DC-based thinktank.

The NPR radio host Esther Ciammachilli retweeted Amanpour’s photograph, writing, “What they imply once they say, ‘An image is price a thousand phrases.’ Christiane Amanpour’s integrity is absolutely intact.”

Bahman Kalbasi, the New York and UN correspondent for BBC’s Persian Service echoed comparable sentiments, tweeting: “Raisi doesn’t present as much as interview with CNN after Christiane Amanpour refuses to placed on regime’s Hijab. Iran regime’s President appears to assume he can impose the Hijab in NYC too. #MahsaAmini.”

Raisi was repeatedly requested about Amini’s loss of life throughout a briefing with reporters on Thursday morning which Iranian officers initially tried to restrict to the topic of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear cope with the west.

Raisi repeated official claims that Amini had died from a coronary heart assault or stroke whereas in custody and mentioned comparable deaths in custody had occurred within the US and UK.

At the very least three ladies who attended the briefing weren’t sporting headscarves.

At the very least 31 individuals have died in six days of protests since Amini’s loss of life. Iranian ladies have been taking to the streets and the web to burn their headscarves and reduce their hair.

“A regulation that tramples on human dignity isn’t a traditional regulation,” mentioned one feminine protester.