"Faith of our fathers, living still," sang a weary, anxious, deeply troubled Jimmy Carter, "in spite of dungeon, fire and sword. . ." And when it came time for the choir to respond with the eloquent verses of Psalm 130, the President sat, head bowed, in his front-row pew at the National Cathedral and listened intently to the ancient words of hope in a time of trouble: "Out of the depths have I cried to you, O Lord, hear my prayer."
The President had joined last week with about 2,000 others in an ecumenical prayer service for 62 American hostages held under threat of death at the captured U.S. embassy compound in Tehran. At his right sat Penny Laingen, wife of L. Bruce Laingen, the imprisoned chargé d'affaires in Tehran. On his left sat Vice President Walter Mondale and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, whose tireless efforts through a fortnight of nerve-racking negotiations had achieved as little as those of the President himself.
The service began with a military color guard presenting the flag, and it ended with The Battle Hymn of the Republic. "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. . . "
For eight days the President had remained largely secluded in the White House, trying every weapon and maneuver he could imagine to resolve this most dangerous and infuriating crisis of his presidency. Most infuriating because the mightiest power on earth found itself engaged in a test of will with an unruly gang of Iranian students and an ailing zealot of 79. Most dangerous because a single miscalculation could lead to large-scale bloodshed and tear to shreds the tenuous balance of power in the Middle East.
It was not until last Saturday, after a week of retaliation and counterretaliation, that the first apparent break in the conflict came. The Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's de facto head of state, ordered the students to release the women and blacks, believed to number a dozen, who were being held hostage. "Islam grants to women a special status," explained Khomeini in announcing his decision, and blacks "have spent ages under American pressure and tyranny."
But on Sunday, while the Iranians were still making preparations to release the first of the hostages, came a shocking announcement that promised only to worsen the crisis. Many of the remaining hostages, proclaimed a spokesman for the students, would now be tried for espionage in the Islamic Revolutionary Courts and "punished in accordance with the severity of their crimes." The Ayatullah himself later confirmed the scheme, adding that the trials would only be halted and the hostages let go if the U.S. returned the Shah. Warned a senior official of West Germany's foreign ministry when told of the threat: "With the turmoil and fanaticism in Iran, one has to be prepared even for the outrage of the hostages' execution, even though that would be international murder."
As for the promise to release some of the hostages, the Iranians dawdled through the weekend and by early Monday Iran time, nearly 40 hours after the first announcement, not a single American had been freed. Instead, the students staged a circus act in the embassy compound, trotting out three of the captives who were