Michelle Obama has her president hubby afraid to even light up a cigarette — yet Iran’s first lady is such a mystery, you’d barely know she existed.
Sahebeh Rouhani — who entered the arranged marriage at the age of 14 — blew off the trip to New York for the UN General Assembly and has been a no-show virtually throughout her husband’s political career.
Sahebeh-watchers say she didn’t campaign with her husband and makes no public appearances with him. She isn’t even mentioned in his official Web site biography.
“Who is Iran’s new first lady? The answer is, we don’t know,” says Golnaz Esfandiari, who blogs on Persian societal issues for Radio Free Europe.
Virtually all that has been publicly revealed about Mrs. Rouhani is that she is a housewife and bore him five children, including a son who is deceased.
All Hassan Rouhani, 64, has ever said publicly about his wife is that his family had chosen her for him.
“I was about 20 years old. My father insisted, my mother as well,” he told the Iranian Students’ News Agency during the campaign.
“I wasn’t very reluctant,” Rouhani added.
On June 19, an Iranian Web site quoted Rouhani’s 86-year-old mother as saying that Rouhani’s wife was 14 years old when they married, the legal age of consent in Iran.
It’s an anonymity that is remarkable even by Iranian standards, says Esfandiari, whose blog is “Persian Letters.”
Even Rouhani’s presidential predecessor, the notorious Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, trotted out his better half, Azam Farahi, for the rare public occasion — albeit in full burqa.
By staying back at a palace in Tehran, Sahebeh missed Michelle’s reception for first ladies and the rest of the week’s festivities — much like her husband, President Hassan Rouhani, “snubbed” President Obama.
In contrast, Michelle Obama has multiple appearances daily, as first lady, first fashionista and health-teacher-in-chief.
President Obama was caught on a hot mike this week saying he quit smoking because he was “scared” of Michelle — an unlikely scenario back at Iran’s Sa’dabad Palace.