A nineteen-year-old female Iranian grandmaster announced that she was joining the Unites States chess federation after having been expelled from the Iranian federation earlier this year for failing to cover her hair during a tournament, The Telegraph reported Tuesday.

Dorsa Derakhshani’s registration, according to the FIDE, the World Chess Federation database, has been changed from Iran to the U.S.

Derakshani was expelled from Iranian chess federation in February when she competed in a tournament in Gibraltar with her hair uncovered. Her younger brother, Borna, was expelled from the Iranian federation when he competed against an Israeli grandmaster during the same tournament.

Mehrdad Pahlevanzadeh, head of the Iranian Chess Federation, said at the time that the siblings “will be denied entry to all tournaments taking place in Iran, and, in the name of Iran, they will no longer be allowed the opportunity to be present on the national team.”

In an interview last week, Derakshani speculated that she was expelled while the Women’s World Chess Championship was taking in place in Tehran in order to distract from negative chess-related publicity Iran was receiving. Nazí Paikidze-Barnes, the reigning American female chess champion, had withdrawn from the tournament as a protest against having to wear hijabs. All three Iranian women who were participating in the tournament were eliminated in the first round. Finally, Iran’s chess federation was having friction with the FIDE over finances.

“So in the middle of all this, they needed another distraction. And somebody tipped off the reporters to specially ask about my brother and I, which worked perfectly,” Dorsa recalled. “Everybody started talking about us.”

When announcing her decision last year not to participate in the tournament hosted in Iran, Paikidze-Barnes wrote, “I think it’s unacceptable to host a WOMEN’S World Championship in a place where women do not have basic fundamental rights and are treated as second-class citizens.”

Her protest was supported by the U.S. Chess Federation, as well as chess luminaries including former world champion Garry Kasparov and grandmasters Nigel Short, Carla Heredia, and Jen Shahade. The English and Danish chess federations also opposed the decision to schedule the tournament in Iran.

[Photo: Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival / YouTube]