Khademalsaharieh at World Chess Championship: Iranian grandmaster plays without a headscarf

The Iranian grandmaster Khademalsaharieh went to the World Rapid Championship in Almaty without a headscarf. The Iranian regime is said to have taken part in the World Cup on its own.

Sara Khademalsaharieh is a young woman who is particularly good at one thing: playing chess. Even as a girl, she won international championship titles. She has been playing in the Bundesliga for the Hamburg Chess Club for eight years.

In 2017 she was at the women’s world championships in her own country and told the Tehraner ARDteam back then: “It’s certainly a good feeling. In chess, many of our games take place with boys and we can win the titles that the boys win, too. Neither age nor gender is an issue in chess. I think chess is a sport where you can be more free – and that’s a nice feeling.”

At the beginning of the week, the 25-year-old sits at the table at the World Rapid Championship in Almaty, Kazakhstan, with the chessboard in front of her. She wears her brown half-length hair down and smiles at the camera. What is missing is the headscarf.

Khademalsaharieh knows the risk

Khademalsaharieh seems focused but not nervous. She knows that this move will have consequences off the board. Because it’s almost impossible these days that she just forgot her headscarf. For many in Iran it is clear that she is showing that she is at home with the demonstrators and that she is declaring her solidarity with the protests that began in mid-September.

This makes her the youngest athlete to choose this path. She follows, for example, the climber Elnaz Rekabi. Other female chess champions have also competed without a headscarf in recent years. They will then turn their backs on Iran. Because they know that they would be put under pressure at home – like Elnaz Rekabi. She finally explains that she accidentally went to the climbing wall without a headscarf.

Regime does not shy away from sports greats

At the beginning of the week, it demonstrated that the regime does not shy away from sporting greats, who are often considered people’s heroes in Iran. It lets a plane with the wife and daughter of soccer icon Ali Daei on board land shortly before its destination Dubai on the Iranian island of Kish. Both have to get out. They return to Tehran.

Nothing will come of the short vacation abroad that the 53-year-old Daei is talking about. Pro-regime media claim that the wife of the former international and Bayern Munich professional should have informed the authorities before leaving Iran because the couple had shown solidarity with the protests.

No Iranian athlete is allowed to wear a headscarf

In the case of chess champion Khademalsaharieh, the chairman of the Iranian Chess Federation speaks up. According to the Iranian media, Hassan Tamini said she took part in the World Cup of her own free will and at her own expense. He is surprised that she doesn’t wear a headscarf in Almaty. So far she has always adhered to the guidelines, he is quoted as saying. The requirements are: No Iranian athlete is allowed to show up without a headscarf, whether at home or abroad.

The Spanish daily newspaper “El Pais” reports that the 25-year-old Iranian will not return to her country. After the World Cup, she wants to move to Spain with her husband, a film director, and their ten-month-old son. In which city? She didn’t want to say that for security reasons, the newspaper said.