CNN’s Christiane Amanpour canceled an interview with the Iranian president after he asked her to wear a headscarf amid the civil unrest in Tehran.
The Chief International Anchor, 64, was set to interview President Ebrahim Raisi, 61, at the United Nations in New York on Wednesday when he demanded she wear a headscarf at the last minute.
Amanpour – who is Iranian and grew up in Tehran – declined the request, writing on her Instagram: ‘We are in New York, where there is no law or tradition regarding headscarves. I pointed out that no previous Iranian president has required this when I have interviewed them outside Iran.’
When she interviewed former President Hassan Rouhani, she did not wear a headscarf either. However, the journalist does wear one while reporting inside Iran, because ‘otherwise you couldn’t operate as a journalist,’ she told CNN’s New Day.
All women, including tourists, have had to wear a headscarf in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The veteran anchor said an aide came in 40 minutes after the interview was supposed to start to ask her to accommodate Raisi’s wishes, who reportedly requested it as it is the ‘holy months of Muharram and Safar.’
‘The aide made it clear that the interview would not happen if I did not wear a headscarf. He said it was “a matter of respect,” and referred to “the situation in Iran” – alluding to the protests sweeping the country,’ Amanpour wrote on Instagram.
‘Again, I said that I couldn’t agree to this unprecedented and unexpected condition,’ she continued. ‘And so we walked away.’
It was supposed to be the first time Raisi would have been interviewed on American soil. He was visiting New York for the United Nations General Assembly.
Amanpour was set to talk to the Iranian president about the growing tensions in Tehran, where women are burning their hijabs after the death of Mansa Amini, 22.
Riots erupted when Mahsa Amini died after being arrested by Islamic Republic’s morality police for wearing ‘unsuitable attire.’
Police said she died of a heart attack and did not suffer any mistreatment, despite experts’ claims she was severely beaten.
State-mandated headscarves have been removed by women in the streets and others shared videos of them defying the draconian dress codes in an open challenge to the authoritarian regime.
At least 10 people have been killed as violence grips the republic.
The US imposed sanctions today on the morality police, accusing it of abuse and violence against Iranian women and of violating the rights of peaceful Iranian protesters.
The US Treasury also said it had put sanctions on the heads of the Iranian army’s ground forces and of the morality police as well as on Iran’s minister of intelligence.
To prevent protests from spreading, Iran’s biggest telecom operator largely shut down mobile internet access again Thursday, said Netblocks, a group that monitors internet access, describing the restrictions as the most severe since 2019.
Reports from Kurdish rights group Hengaw said three protesters were killed on Wednesday, bringing the death toll from the protests to 10.
An anchor on Iran’s state television suggested the death toll from the mass protests could be as high as 17 on Thursday but did not say how he reached that figure.
‘Unfortunately, 17 people and police officers present at the scene of these events lost their lives,’ the Iranian anchor said, adding official statistics would be released later.
One pensioner removed her headscarf and chanted ‘death to Khamenei’ while protesters ripped down posters of the Supreme Leader.
In footage from Sari, the capital of northern Mazandaran province, activists tore down posters of the founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Khomeini, and Supreme Leader Khamenei on a municipality building.
‘Amin Marafti, 16, Milan Haghigi, 21, and Sadruddin Litani, 27, were at least three Shno residents who were shot dead by government forces during the city’s demonstrations,’ Hengaw said in a statement.
‘I’m just looking outside of from flat’s window. It’s a complete chaos down here,’ Ashskan, a resident of Tajrish in the center of the capital Tehran, told MailOnline.
‘[The police] fired teargas here, it’s a residential, children are living here. It’s lots of smoke, people are suffocating,’ he said.
‘Most of the protesters are women with no headscarves. They are clashing with the police. Some time police officers run after the people and sometime the other way around,’ he added.
It’s very crowded. They fired teargas into our parking. They are chanting ‘Dictator! Dictator!’ and also “death to the dictator.” I also heard gunshots,’ he continued.
Iran blocked access to Instagram and WhatsApp and imposed drastic restrictions on internet access Thursday.
‘In accordance with a decision by officials, it has no longer been possible to access Instagram in Iran since Wednesday evening and access to WhatsApp is also disrupted,’ the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
The NetBlocks shows a near-total disruption to internet service in parts of Kurdistan province in western Iran since Monday, while the capital city of Tehran and other parts of the country have also faced disruptions since Friday, when protests first broke out.
The two apps were the most widely used in Iran after the blocking of other platforms in recent years, including Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, YouTube and TikTok.
It comes as 13 Iranian lawmakers have suggested to the government to take harsher measures against the protesters.
Officials have denied that security forces have killed protesters, suggesting they may have been shot by armed dissidents but footage shows police officers firing directly at people.
Meanwhile, protesters in Tehran and several other Iranian cities torched police stations and vehicles on Thursday morning.
Unrest triggered by the death of a woman detained by the Islamic Republic’s morality police intensified for the sixth day.
Amini’s death unleashed huge anger in the population and the worst protests in Iran since 2019.
Many Iranians, particularly the young, have come to see Amini’s death as part of the Islamic Republic’s heavy-handed policing of dissent and the morality police’s increasingly violent treatment of young women.
Some women demonstrators have defiantly taken off their hijabs and burned them in bonfires or symbolically cut their hair, video footage spread virally on social media has shown.
Most of the protests have been concentrated in Iran’s Kurdish-populated northwestern regions but have spread to the capital and at least 50 cities and towns nationwide, with police using force to disperse protesters.
