Yep.
They are on a powertrip.
A friend of mine's cousin is Armenian. He was born in Tehran, but left as a child when the Shaw was overthrown. Long story short, he is in the US military now - special ops. When he comes to Toronto to visit his family here, he always gets hassled by the US Customs guys going back to the US. He told us one great story of how as soon as they find out that he was born in Tehran that he gets hauled off to the "special room" every time.
One time, he was actually with his mother, he draws some super-cop US Custom's guy who was a particular asshole and demanded to know "when was the last time you were in Tehran Iran"
The guy answers, "I can't tell you that"
Which only enraged the dick head. So buddy hands the dick head a some US military card with an ID number and tells dickhead, "you need to call this number" Dickhead gives him a huge hard time and buddy says, "if you don't call this number right now, it will mean your job" Dickhead calls the number all smug and buddy tells the story of how his face just goes grey when the voice on the other end of the line tells him to let buddy go and stop being an asshole orelse. Buddy says to him, "and let my mother go too"
"Yes sir, no problem Mr. So and so"