I guess it was bigger for me because of being an embassy brat. Planes being hijacked were old news, and were filled with people from everywhere and all airlines so yes, world war indeed, Teribus is right. Today-35 years was (merely?) the first attack on what was supposed to be a protected space (planes are in public, like banks; embassies are not). Startled the something out of me. Should have warned me about what was coming. Should have warned everybody. But nope.
Actually, I think there was an attack on an embassy in the US that was about the same kind of barbarism, in the late 70's but before the Teheran one.
But it is stuff like this that makes me seethe when people refer to 9-11 as the beginning of "them" killing "us" where "us" are Americans in particular and the West in general, and "them" is the islamoterrorists. Not islam, and not other terrorists, like ETA and the IRA who carefully, mostly, killed the French/Spanish and British, respectively, and not even all Europeans, let alone all Westerners.