NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess) — Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi backed out of an interview with CNN’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour at the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday after she declined to wear a head scarf.
According to CNN, Raisi was running 40 minutes late to the long-planned interview on Wednesday when aids for the President told Amanpour that he had requested that she wear a head scarf during the meeting.
Amanpour politely declined the request, at which point the President’s aid made it clear the interview would not take place without the scarf in place, describing it as a “a matter of respect,” due to the holy months of Muharram and Safar and the “situation in Iran,” seemingly alluding to widespread protests currently underway, CNN reported.
Iran has been riven by widespread protests in recent days, following the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, after she was arrested by Iran’s morality police for allegedly failing to properly wear a head scarf.
Iran requires all women to wear a head covering and loose-fitting clothes in public since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the government of the Iranian monarch Mohammad Reza Shah.
Amanpour, who was raised in Tehran, told CNN’s New Day that she had never been asked by an Iranian President to wear a head scarf for an interview in the United States, noting that she has interviewed every president from the Central Asian nation since 1995.
“I very politely declined on behalf of myself and CNN, and female journalists everywhere because it is not a requirement,” Amanpour said.
