American cyclist who got trapped in Iran talks about his tense escape as Israeli “bombs kept falling”

Sauté a bottle of champagne on the Atlantic coast of Portugal in February, 32 -year -old Ian Andersen undertaken to realize his dream of cycling on the seven continents of the world. He planned to ride for 10 months, covering around 10,000 miles to reach his final destination in Japan.

However, he had not planned Israel to launch a war against Iran.

While crossing Iran on June 1, Andersen was filled with excitation and anxiety.

“I was quite nervous. I said to myself, okay, now we are entering an unexplored territory here,” he told CBS News on Thursday in a hotel room in the capital of Bakou in Azerbaijan. “But I was immediately at ease with so many positive experiences of people I met on the road … and hospitality, generosity.”

He said he was “surprised daily” by nice and curious Iranians inviting him tea or offering him food, even trying to pay for his meal in a restaurant.

On June 13, it changed, when Israel began to bomb the nuclear and military sites of Iran.

“It is not an external hostility, but I read in a way the body language of people and their facial expressions,” said Andersen. “And I knew that I was in a little danger, because people considered Israel and the United States to be quite linked at that time, while the bombs continued to fall and the missiles collapsed.”

He and his local Iranian guide, Reza, decided to be silent in a guest house about 45 miles north of Tehran, in a village called Harijan, for two days.

Reza, who, according to Andersen, had become his friend, advised him to avoid telling people that he was American and to avoid talking to people if possible. But he said he had slipped, revealing his nationality to certain local travelers who joined them at the hotel.

“They were not satisfied with the fact that they had to share a hotel with” this American “who was there,” said Andersen.

On June 15, Andersen heard an Israeli bomb exploding in the distance. On the same day, he received an email from the American State Department, advisor to options for Americans wishing to leave Iran, based on their current locations. He decided that his best bet was eight hours on the north, around the Caspian Sea, to reach Azerbaijan.

He and Reza were quickly taken in a constant flow of dense traffic, while the residents spread to Tehran. They have spent service stations with long lines of cars and many military checks.

“It was quite painful,” he said. “The idea of ​​being stopped at one of the military checkpoints.”

“Reza, my guide, had told me that he couldn’t protect me anymore, and that it really shook me, right? Because it’s my guide. It’s my Iranian guide, and very stable, robust, reliable. And he’s like,” very well, that’s it.

Andersen said that he had become “more and more comfortable as we got closer”, and they finally succeeded without incident on the Iranian border with Azerbaijan.

But the most scary part of this last day was about to start, because he was interviewed not once, but twice by Iranian officials – the normal border police then by the body of the Iranian revolutionary guard.

For the second interview, it was removed from a crowd and taken to the background of a storage cupboard in a fortune barracks in the army.

“This is where I said to myself:” Okay, I have 50-50 chances of being taken either as a negotiation program, or for another interrogation “,” he said. “In fact, the interview was like less than a minute.”

“I left at night to get my bicycle, then I actually entered Azerbaijan, and I expected half to remind me. I said to myself:” Something is not going here. Hmm, why was it so easy? “But they did not do it, and I was able to enter Azerbaijan.”

As much Iran’s internet firewall, he was able to send a message to his family in the United States before going to the first hotel he could find, then sleeping for 12 hours of relief and exhaustion.

Now in security as the Israeli-Iranian conflict takes place, Andersen said he was very thinking of the possible overflow effect for anyone with a living and traveling American passport.

He said he had recorded his travel route to the United States State Department Pas Programwhich sends specific notifications and updates to the country based on the movements of a traveler. This is how he knew how to head towards Azerbaijan, and he urges all Americans traveling abroad to do the same.

Andersen also said that if it was not for his Iranian guide, he might not be out of the country. He hopes to collect funds for Reza and his family, who are still in Iran.

He also intends to continue his bicycle ride in Japan, to realize his dream of cycling all the continents of the world.