In 1980, as 52 hostages were being held by Iranian students at the US Embassy in Tehran, a 34-year-old Donald Trump advocated for a US invasion of Iran. 

In an October 1980 interview with gossip columnist Rona Barrett, uncovered on Tuesday by Brookings Institution amid an escalating crisis with Iran, Trump said the US "should really be a country that gets the respect of other countries."

"The Iranian situation is a case in point," he ad That they hold our hostages is just absolutely, and totally ridiculous. That this country sits back and allows a country such as Iran to hold our hostages, to my way of thinking, is a horror, and I don't think they'd do it with other countries. I honestly don't think they'd do it with other countries." 

Barrett replied: "Obviously you're advocating that we should have gone in there with troops, et cetera, and brought our boys out like Vietnam."

To which Trump said: "I absolutely feel that, yes. I don't think there's any question, and there is no question in my mind. I think right now we'd be an oil-rich nation, and I believe that we should have done it, and I'm very disappointed that we didn't do it, and I don't think anybody would have held us in abeyance."