They were worlds apart then — and they still are now.
President Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani — who notably avoided the leader of the free world at the United Nations on Tuesday — were leading dramatically different lives when a mob of Islamic revolutionaries overran the US Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage in November 1979.
“Barry” Obama was just starting his freshman year at Occidental College in LA after graduating from the Punahou School in Honolulu, where he wore number 25 as a member of the varsity basketball team.
Meanwhile, Rouhani — who is 13 years older than Obama — was already long the “golden boy” of Iran’s Islamic leaders, in his early teens having joined the radical resistance movement headed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni.