CNN’s Christiane Amanpour rejects Iranian president’s request to wear a headscarf

CNN’s international anchor, Christiane Amanpour, revealed that an interview with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was canceled on Wednesday night, after she refused the president’s last-minute request to wear the hijab.

“I politely declined,” Amanpour wrote on Twitter. “We are in New York, where there is no law of tradition regarding the headscarf. I pointed out that no previous Iranian president had asked for it when I interviewed them outside Iran.”

According to Amanpour, an aide to the veteran journalist said that President Raisi suggested her to wear the hijab “because it is the holy month of Muharram and Safar.”

After their initial application was rejected, the assistant informed Amanpour that they would withdraw the interview if it was refused.

“And so we moved away. The interview did not happen. With the protests continuing in Iran and killing people, it was an important moment to speak with President Raisi.”

Amanpour wrote that the scheduled interview, which was to take place in New York during the president’s visit to the United Nations General Assembly, took “weeks of planning and eight hours of preparing translation equipment, lights and cameras.”

In President Raisi’s first interview on US soil, Amanpour had intended to discuss the protests in Iran related to the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in custody of the “morality police”. During these protests, women have been burning their headscarves, with human rights groups saying at least eight have been killed.

“I said I cannot agree to this unprecedented and unexpected situation,” Amanpour wrote on Twitter about the president’s request for a headscarf.



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