A female chess player from Iran switched allegiance to the U.S. team after a brouhaha over her failure to wear a headscarf during competition.

Dorsa Derakhshani refused to wear the required Islamic head covering, the hijab, during a February face-off in Gibraltar.

When Iran reacted in anger, she joined the American chess team.

The Washington Post has more:

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has required women to wear the hijab in public places. However, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported Monday that the president of Iran’s chess federation, Mehrdad Pahlevanzadeh, said that Dorsa had in fact changed her national federation to the United States, which was not unusual among chess players. Pahlevanzadeh added that she was not a member of Iran’s national chess team. “She played for Iran only one time in 2014,” he clarified. Dorsa left Tehran and moved to Barcelona in 2015 after she received an invitation by a chess club that also supported her studies, according to ISNA. She was awarded the titles Woman Grandmaster and International Master by the World Chess Federation in 2016.

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