Former Norwegian Prime Minsiter Kjell Magne Bondevik (R) was held for an hour at Dulles, evidently because he has visited Iran in 2014. (Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images)

“I was surprised, and I was provoked,” says Kjell Magne Bondevik, a two-time prime minister of Norway, told ABC7 about his treatment at Washington Dulles International airport. “What will the reputation of the U.S. be if this happens not only to me, but also to other international leaders?”

Bondevik was detained for an hour after flying to the U.S. to attend the National Prayer Breakfast, apparently over a 2014 trip to Iran.

He described being placed in a room with travelers from the Middle East and Africa, where he waited for 40 minutes before being questioned for 20 minutes about the trip to speak at a human rights conference.

“They started asking me why I had been in Iran and why I was coming to the United States. There should be no reason to fear a former prime minister who has been on official visits to the country several times before,” Bondevik told a Norweigan TV outlet, according to The Local.

The issue is not related to Donald Trump’s recently enacted travel ban, Bondevik told ABC7, but a 2015 law. It stipulates that citizens of 38 countries that don’t normally require a visa for short-term trips to the U.S. must have one if they’ve visited Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia or Yemen since 2011. Exceptions are made for trips of a diplomatic or military purpose.

Bondevik’s office had contacted the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, which said that his diplomatic passport—which states that he is a former Norweigan prime minister—and an electronic authorization, known as ESTA, would be sufficient.

“It should be enough when they found that I have a diplomatic passport, [that I’m a] former prime minister,” Bondevik said. “That should be enough for them to understand that I don’t represent any problem or threat to this country and [to] let me go immediately, but they didn’t.”

Though he has visited the U.S. on several occasions since the 2014 trip to Iran, it is the first time Bondevik was stopped for a secondary inspection.

He is in town to attend the National Prayer Breakfast, where Donald Trump instructed the crowd to “pray for Arnold” over the Apprentice’s ratings and not to worry about the “tough” phone calls he’s been having with world leaders. “We’re being taken advantage of by every nation in the world, virtually,” Trump said. “It’s not going to happen anymore.”

Currently the president of the Oslo Centre for Peace and Human Rights, Bondevik served as Norway’s prime minister from 1997-2000 and 2001-2005.

“I understand the fear of terror, but one should not treat entire ethnic groups in such a way. I must admit that I fear the future,” Bondevik said about Trump’s recently enacted travel restrictions, according to The Local. “There has been a lot of progress over the last ten years, but this gives great cause for concern, in line with the authoritarian leaders we see controlling other major countries.”