[1] At the FIDE General Assembly during the 42nd Chess Olympiad in Baku in September 2016, the organizational rights to the event were awarded to Iran, who held the Championship in Tehran from 10 February to 4 March 2017.

[7][8] The original agenda for the General Assembly made no explicit mention of Iran, only indicating that the event had been postponed until 2017 due to the lack of an organizer,[8] similar to the situations in 2014 and 2015.

[9] Only when FIDE published the General Assembly decisions two weeks later did the existence of the Iran offer become widely known, and the issue rapidly became explosive, in part due to the social media activity of Nigel Short, who alternatively claimed that awarding the event to Iran was against FIDE Statutes[10] or the Code of Ethics (or founding Principles) of the International Olympic Committee.

Nazí Paikidze, who qualified by finishing tied for 2nd in the 2015 US Women's Championship, was the first female player to protest FIDE's decision to allow Iran to host the event.

A statement from FIDE Press Officer Anastasiya Karlovich was published at Susan Polgar's site Chess Daily News on October 1, 2016, indicating that FIDE has not received any official complaints to date (including from prior women's events held in Iran), but that they would be reviewing all possible solutions for the players’ comfort and would discuss all the issues with the organizers in Iran during meetings in the next few weeks.

[14] Emil Sutovsky, the president of the Association of Chess Professionals (ACP), hosted discussions at his Facebook page on the matter, and wrote an official letter to FIDE.

[16] Natalia Zhukova, Alexandra Kosteniuk, Anna Muzychuk, and Elisabeth Paehtz have all made public comments to Sutovsky, but none to the degree of Nazí Paikidze.

[citation needed] Sutovsky was willing to entertain Nigel Short's claims regarding the illegality of FIDE's actions, but simultaneously would not pursue them (either personally or as ACP president) until a proper legal argument was made on the matter.

[citation needed] ChessBase India interviewed two of the three qualifiers from that country (Harika Dronavalli and Humpy Koneru), each of whom has played in Iran previously.

[17] They indicated a degree of awkwardness and discomfort with the physical aspects of the headscarf while playing (as had Zhukova), but declared the World Championship itself to be more important.