While introducing CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour as a guest on daily offer Monday evening, host Trevor Noah joked that when Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi Suddenly canceled a planned interview With her last week, “leaving her looking like she’s treating a ghost.”
Speaking from her home in London, Amanpour broke down why she ultimately decided to walk away from the coveted interview instead of wearing a headscarf as the president’s staff were demanding. She explained that she had always had her first international meeting with the newest Iranian president, but that she had never been asked to cover her hair on American soil.
“There is no law in the United States that requires a journalist to wear a scarf in any interview,” she said.
When the assistant first approached her to tell her that Raisi wanted her to wear a scarf, Amanpour said her first reaction was, “Why?” It is quickly followed by “No, you don’t have to wear a scarf.”
“As a journalist, I made, at once, a journalistic decision,” she continued, pinching her fingers, “on the principle that A, it was not law, and B, not armed with force by a foreign government or any government when trying to sit down and give an interview that was arranged pre “.
After the cheers died down, Noah brought up the apparent “timing” of the incident – amid mass protests in Iran over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who Died in police custody After he was arrested for violating the country’s strict dress code.
Amanpour agreed that Raisi “did not want to be seen with a woman whose head was exposed at the same time that there was a street uprising in his country” over the same issue. Later on, she couldn’t help but laugh when I moved Persepolis Writer Marjan Satrapi, who recently told her that if Iranian men are “too horny and unable to control themselves” over women’s hair, “maybe they should take a cold shower or look elsewhere.”
Finally, Amanpour likened Iranian rules restricting how women can wear to the numerous anti-abortion laws that were in effect after the abolition of Raw vs. Wade. “It’s a very important thing we have to watch,” she said, “and at that moment, I wasn’t, as a journalist or as a woman, wearing a headscarf.”