but... the viewing is about how Tom's past (Owyn) will lead him to tie himself and help Rand (who is another man "juggling fire", a channeller).

It's not impossible it's about Mat instead, as in the late stories, Thom binds himself fairly tightly to Mat, who is associated to fire (Aludra's dragons), and he's also the one Thom taught to juggle. And this all came about in the beginning because of Thom's guilt over Owyn.

It's the same thing about Lan and Malkier. It's a viewing about how his past (the destruction of Malkier via the ruined Towers - his oaths taken for him on his cradle, the sword as symbol of fighting) is extremely relevant to his future (the raising of the Golden Crane for Tarmon Gai'don).

The viewings always relate to the future, but the images in the viewing are indifferently about past, present, future or totally neutral (eg: the broken crown or the rose crowns are past/neutral, but the meaning they point at is about the future of Perrin, Elayne etc. Thom retrieving Moiraine's stone from a fire is an image from the future, perhaps in part symbolic; the Seven Towers in ruin is from the past but point to the relevance of the Malkier-Shadow war in Lan's future. Etc.)

"Min doesn't recognize X in the viewing" is totally irrelevant. First, she doesn't always tell others when she recognizes someone, and then the person she sees in a viewing isn't always "realistic" (in Thom's case, however, it's likely because the man juggling fire was Owyn). It's a bit the same with Egwene's dreams. She hasn't recognized Aram as the Tinker with the sword, and it seems likely she hasn't recognized Rand as the dying man on a narrow cot. Min hasn't recognized Galad as the man in white Berelain will fall for, though it's likely him. Etc. Sometimes Min sees clearly, sometimes Min seems to see some half-blurred generic figures (of a man in white, for example. It wasn't necessarily even a man in a WC uniform in the image, it just represented one). The clarity of Min's viewings or Egwene's dreams etc. fluctuated according to what Jordan intended to reveal - if he wanted to puzzle us/make us guess, or to anticipate, and if he wanted his chosen "seer" to understand or not. He didn't want to get into Egwene recognizing Aram, or seemingly Min knowing it's Galad Berelain will fall in love with (who she have kept that to herself, knowing how Elayne hates Berelain? It's a storypoint Jordan didn't want to get into.. no more than he wanted us to know at the time that Galad and Perrin's group would meet).