Story highlights Former European leader attended a conference in Iran in 2014

Bondevik was heading to the National Prayer Breakfast when he was detained

(CNN) If you're the former leader of a European nation, the president of a major human rights organization and the owner of a diplomatic passport, you're not likely to encounter a long wait at airport immigration.

But on January 31, Kjell Magne Bondevik, the former Prime Minister of Norway, encountered more than just a lengthy queue.

Bondevik told CNN's "Connect the World" he was interrogated by officials at Washington's Dulles International Airport because he had an Iranian visa in his diplomatic passport.

"When they found the Iranian visa, where I was in December 2014, they said that there was a ... regulation that with such a visa I had to be flagged up," Bondevik said.

After the former European leader detailed his travel history -- he was in Tehran speaking at an anti-extremism conference -- Bondevik said he "assumed and presumed that they would let me go immediately."

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