Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday tweeted a series of messages in which he described what other world leaders had done at the age of 20.
Using the hashtag Presidentat20, Rouhani appeared to be mocking U.S. President Barack Obama, when he wrote: “Obama was continuing his education at university at 20. He is said to have been on alcohol and Marijuana then!”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, wrote Rouhani, was working for Russian security agencies at 20.
He erroneously referred to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the masculine in the first part of his tweet about her, writing that Merkel “got his degree at the age of 20 while she was working as a waitress, too.”
Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad “was studying medicine at university of Damascus at the age of 20,” wrote Rouhani.
British Prime Minister David Cameron “was working as a researcher at a Conservative Party’s research center and was a member of the notorious Bullingdon Club.”
The final tweet referred to Rouhani himself, and read, “Dr. Rouhani used to speak against the Shah in support of Imam Khomeini.”
The purpose of the tweets is not known and some interpreted them to mean that Rouhani may have been trying to show how he himself was politically involved already at a young age, as opposed to his counterparts across the world.
Rouhani, or someone with close ties to him, has used Twitter in the past to get messages out to the world. In September, a different account named after the Iranian president tweeted a greeting to Jews in honor of Rosh Hashanah.
Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, later joined Rouhani’s Rosh Hashanah greetings and also took advantage of the opportunity to say that his country no longer denies the Holocaust, as former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had done for years.