Security guards during an airport protest | Oli Scarff/Getty Images Former Norwegian PM held in Washington airport over Iran travel These kinds of incidents will be a blow to US reputation, Kjell Magne Bondevik said.

Norway's former Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik was detained for questioning at Dulles Airport in Washington, ABC7 reported Friday.

Authorities held Bondevik, who served as prime minister from 1997-2000 and 2001-2005, for an hour on Tuesday because his passport showed he had traveled to Iran in 2014.

Bondevik said it was obvious he was not a threat to the U.S.

"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."

Bondevik told ABC7 he was placed in a room with travelers from the Middle East and Africa, made to wait 40 minutes and then was questioned for 20 minutes about his trip to Iran, where he had spoken at a human rights conference.

Authorities told Bondevik the added scrutiny had nothing to do with President Donald Trump's controversial travel ban, which applies to those from seven majority-Muslim countries, but was related to a 2015 law signed by former President Barack Obama in the wake of terrorist attacks in California and Paris.

The law places extra restrictions on citizens from 38 countries that are part of the U.S.'s visa waiver program, including Norway, if they travel to Iran, or the six other countries that now fall under Trump's ban. Exceptions are typically made for people who go there on behalf of international organizations.

Bondevik, who is head of a human rights organization called the Oslo Center, said he was "surprised and provoked" by the scrutiny and suggested further incidents of that kind would be blow to America's reputation.