As Politico’s Laura Rozen points out, there is a remarkable moment of black comedy in the Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari’s personal account of his recent captivity and interrogation in Tehran’s Evin prison. Mr. Bahari, an Iranian-Canadian filmmaker and writer whose detention we discussed last month on The Lede, writes that during his confinement, at one point his interrogator asked him to explain his appearance in a fake news report (embedded above) that was filmed by Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” in the run-up to June’s disputed presidential election.

Mr. Bahari’s account of his 118 days in captivity offers a fascinating insight into the government’s attempts to understand and stifle the dissent that followed the election. It is often a harrowing read, but his description of being pressed about the meaning of his appearance on “The Daily Show,” in addition to being absurd, points to the apparent difficulty his interrogators had in distinguishing between the work of spies and the work of journalists. Mr. Bahari, who calls his main interrogator “Mr. Rosewater” because of the cologne he wore, recalls:

I saw the flicker of a laptop monitor under my blindfold. Then I heard someone speaking. It was a recording of another prisoner’s confession. “It’s not that one,” said the second interrogator. “It’s the one marked ‘Spy in coffee shop.’ ” Mr. Rosewater fumbled with the computer. The other man stepped in to change the DVD. And then I heard the voice of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. Only a few weeks earlier, hundreds of foreign reporters had been allowed into the country in the run-up to the election. Among them was Jason Jones, a “correspondent” for Stewart’s satirical news program. Jason interviewed me in a Tehran coffee shop, pretending to be a thick-skulled American. He dressed like some character out of a B movie about mercenaries in the Middle East—with a checkered Palestinian kaffiyeh around his neck and dark sunglasses. The “interview” was very short. Jason asked me why Iran was evil. I answered that Iran was not evil. I added that, as a matter of fact, Iran and America shared many enemies and interests in common. But the interrogators weren’t interested in what I was saying. They were fixated on Jason. “Why is this American dressed like a spy, Mr. Bahari?” asked the new man. “He is pretending to be a spy. It’s part of a comedy show,” I answered. “Tell the truth!” Mr. Rosewater shouted. “What is so funny about sitting in a coffee shop with a kaffiyeh and sunglasses?” “It’s just a joke. Nothing serious. It’s stupid.” I was getting worried. “I hope you are not suggesting that he is a real spy.” “Can you tell us why an American journalist pretending to be a spy has chosen you to interview?” asked the man with the creases. …

That same satirical “Daily Show” report also included an interview with Muhammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president, who was sentenced last week to six years in prison “for crimes against internal national security, propaganda against the Islamic republic, insulting the president and creating public disorder by his presence at illegal protests,” according to a Web site on Iran monitored by my colleague Michael Slackman.

Another of the comedy program’s reports from Iran this summer included an interview with a young man in Tehran who said he was familiar with it, so “The Daily Show” is not unknown in Iran, even if the regime members who interrogated Mr. Bahari failed to see its humor.

In addition to telling his story in Newsweek, Mr. Bahari discussed his interrogation in an interview with Bob Simon on the CBS News program “60 Minutes.” That interview, which was broadcast on Sunday, is embedded below.

During the interview, Mr. Bahari screened some of the video he shot of the post-election demonstrations. His recordings include images of protesters being shot and killed during a confrontation with members of Iran’s Basij militia on June 15, after the first huge post-election protest rally in Tehran.

Mr. Bahari also told CBS that his fears for his personal safety were made worse by the fact that his interrogator was so completely ignorant of his work that he described Newsweek as an intelligence service and had a strange fixation with one American state, New Jersey:

He was fascinated with New Jersey. I think the words New Jersey sounded to him like the most American place that you can be in your life. Because he thought of New Jersey as kind of like paradise. To him, he had to suffer on this world in order to go to paradise — in order to drink wine and have sex with at least 72 virgins and then others if he wanted to… He hated me and he was jealous of me at the same time, because I had been to New Jersey. And then, I thought to myself, ‘Maziar, you are screwed, because these guys are in charge of your life and they are stupid, they are ignorant.’

After 118 days, Mr. Bahari was finally released after he made a forced confession, which is also shown in the “60 Minutes” interview. Having left Iran, he told CBS that he firmly believes something fundamental has changed there. “Since the election,” he told Mr. Simon, “we can say that Iran is not a clerical regime anymore, it’s a military regime — because instead of clerics, it’s the military, the Revolutionary Guards, who are in power.”