SEATTLE -- James Longley first went to Iran to make a documentary about school kids.

Suddenly, the Seattle-area filmmaker found himself caught up in the midst of a questionable election and escalating riots.

Now he's been expelled from Iran and says he has no idea if he'll ever be allowed back.

"I first came to Iran in 2007, the beginning of 2007. Since then I've probably spent 14 or 15 months in Iran," Longley told KOMO News by phone from his hotel in Kuwait.

"My project in Iran has been to make a documentary about a middle school up in the north." But Longley says as part of that, he had permission to film at polling places during the most recent election.

Longley says he first filmed at two polling locations in the north and then drove four hours to Tehran where he filmed at two different polls.

"Even in the evening there were long lines in Tehran. So it really seemed like everyone was going to vote," he said.

Longley says for the past few weeks he had been asking friends, colleagues and people on the street how they would be voting.

"Generally, the consensus was everyone was voting for Mousavi. They were tired of Ahmadinejad," explained Longley, who added he was sure it would be a landslide for presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

But even before the polls closed, Longley says there was trouble: "Around 5:30 or 6:00 there was a raid conducted on the Mousavi campaign headquarters."

Longley says he arrived on scene 45 minutes after the raid, "and there were basically people being held hostage in the building."

Longley says he shot footage of the raid and the protests outside held by supporters. Then he says he began hearing of more raids/

"And this had happened not only at this office, but other offices of Mousavi campaign simultaneously, which leads me to believe it was something orchestrated from above."

These, however, were not the first suspect signs. The day of the election, Internet service nationwide was down as was the entire SMS, or text messaging, network. Longley says that seemed suspicious to him.

"The SMS network was the way the poll workers of the Mousavi campaign were to have reported any irregularities they noticed at polling stations."

By now, the world knows election returns were reported before many polls had even closed and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared the winner, but Longley says what many don't realize is that the protests began very quietly.

In fact, he says over the first few days he attended many public rallies that were completely silent. It was the crackdown by the government on those rallies that Longley says sparked the proceeding violence.

"This is a direct result really to the fact that the government in Iran did not allow people to have peaceful protests," Longley said.

Longley himself was detained for a time and barred from filming or taking any more pictures. But he says he did attend more rallies and talked to more people without his camera.

The government, Longley says, has been able to clamp down on the violent protests by arresting everyone.

"But what they are not able to do is quell the anger and the dissatisfaction and unhappiness that people feel about the situation and that has really been quite exacerbated.

"I think you've seen things kind of morph," says Longley who now believes the violence is dying down. Now he says the debate has moved inside homes, classrooms, and in the halls of government.

"This situation has fundamentally changed the thinking of people in the country," Longley said.

The situation has also changed the thinking even among the ruling class over the way the election and the resulting crackdown was handled.

"There is deep animosity now between very powerful factions in the upper echelons of the Iranian government," Longley said.

And it is that top to bottom anger and the new more open willingness to speak out that Longley says could spark reform. Still, he warns Western powers shouldn't expect too much change too quickly.

"I don't think this current unrest is going to result in some kind of 1979-like overthrow of the government and replacing it with a completely different political system," Longley surmised.

Longley was expelled from Iran earlier this week. He says he's now headed to Gaza where he's hoping to work on a different project.

After that is finished, he does want to try and get home to Seattle for a time. As for his documentary on the middle school in Iran, Longley says, "It may be that my film will remain unfinished."

Hear full 30-minute interview

You can listen to Travis Mayfield's entire 30-minute interview with James Longley at this link