"We Wept Together"

Prayers, tears and new fears as clergymen visit the hostages

They had all been readied for display. Their hair was neatly combed, and their clothes were freshly laundered. Though many of them had long been kept in silent isolation, with their hands tied, they now seemed in good physical condition. Several eagerly asked their American visitors which football teams were in the professional playoffs and college bowl games. They were prohibited from talking about politics, but one nonetheless inquired: "Is Teddy Kennedy running for President?" A few muttered defiant wisecracks about their captors, but others, particularly some of the younger ones, seemed under considerable strain. When the brief encounters were over, a few sobbed as they embraced the visitors and then headed back to the cubicles in which they have been held for eight weeks. All the while, thousands of young Iranians stood outside in the first snow of the season, chanting the familiar slogans: "Death to the Shah! Death to Carter!"

This was the scene last week at the U.S. embassy in Tehran during the Christmas visit by four clergymen. The churchmen were French-born Leon-Etienne Cardinal Duval, Catholic Archbishop of Algiers, and three liberal American clerics: William Sloane Coffin Jr., senior minister of New York City's interdenominational Riverside Church; Thomas J. Gumbleton, Catholic auxiliary bishop of Detroit; and M. William Howard, president of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

The four men had been invited to Tehran, at their own expense, by Iran's ruling Revolutionary Council, which selected them from a list of names proposed by Foreign Ministry officials. Explained Council Member Mohammed Javad Bahonar: "Our experts gave priority to those known for their advocacy of anti-imperialist and humanitarian movements." Some of the names had been suggested to the Foreign Ministry by three Kansans who were in Tehran trying on their own to negotiate an end to the crisis. The Kansans were led by Norman Forer, a former antiwar activist who teaches social welfare at the University of Kansas; after 18 days in Tehran, the would-be mediators went home.

The Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini had presumably intended the clergymen's visit to answer mounting world fears about the hostages' treatment. But instead the result was a new controversy over the fact that some of the Americans were missing. The militants at the embassy insisted that for security reasons, no more than five hostages could meet with a clergyman at one time. After considerable argument, the clerics split up and conducted eleven separate services. Said Gumbleton: "We sang together, we prayed together and we shared the Eucharist together. I should also say that we wept together." Afterward, the churchmen tallied the number of hostages that each had seen and arrived at a total of 41 men and two women--seven short of the 50 hostages who the State Department insists were seized by the students on Nov. 4.

Where are the missing hostages? The self-appointed spokesmen for the militants offered typically contradictory explanations. Said Howard: "We were told by the students that we had seen them all." But one militant told Iranian reporters that several Americans had not wanted to meet with the clergymen--a claim that seemed hardly credible. Another suggested to Western reporters that those hostages who are suspected by their captors of being spies might have been barred from attending the services. Indeed, the seven who were missing apparently included three Americans who the Iranians have alleged are CIA agents: Thomas Ahern Jr., William Daugherty and Malcolm Kalp. Westerners in Tehran offered still other explanations: some recalcitrant hostages may have been kept away as punishment; some may be in poor condition; some may have been moved away from the embassy.

As journalists pressed for an explanation, the Iranians' accounting of the hostages became increasingly murky. One student spokesman maintained that "we have never announced the number of hostages that we hold." Another said there were 50 hostages in all--not including U.S. Charge d'Affaires Bruce Laingen and two other embassy officials who are being held at the Iranian Foreign Ministry. Still another said the militants actually were holding only 49 hostages. The American clergymen appealed to Iranian Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh for help. But he has little influence over the students, and promised only that he would ask them for a list of the hostages; by week's end there was still no list.

"A very cruel numbers game," declared a State Department official in Washington. The department stuck by its count of 50 hostages, which consists of 28 people accredited with the Iranian government as diplomats, 20 nondiplomatic embassy staff members and two private citizens. Insisted State Department Spokesman Hodding Carter: "Our records show that 50 Americans are presumed to be held hostage in the [embassy] compound. The responsibility for producing these people and their identity belongs to their captors." U.S. officials have refused to divulge the names of the hostages and have very strongly requested for some weeks that U.S. publications not print photographs or identifications of the hostages other than those coming from the embassy in Tehran. TIME has complied with the Government's request.

Last week all three American TV networks refused to air an hour-long film produced by the Iranian militants of the Christmas Eve services for the hostages. Network officials explained that they rejected the film, which included a harangue by Khomeini, because they had no editorial control over it. Said Lester Crystal, senior executive producer of NBC News: "The restrictions were too onerous to consider."

While the number of hostages was being argued, the crisis took yet another bizarre twist, this time in Qum. There Khomeini met with six U.S. ministers, apparently under the mistaken impression that they included the three Americans who had visited the embassy. He delivered a tirade against the failings of Christian clergymen and of Pope John Paul II, who has urged that the hostages be released. Asked Khomeini: "Do you know that, with his economic blockade, Mr. Carter intends to let 35 million people die of starvation? Does the Pope know about all this and yet condemn us? Or is it the case that he is misinformed? If the Pope is informed, then woe be to us. If he is not informed, woe be to the Vatican."

It was Khomeini who was misinformed: Carter has made no attempt to restrict Iran's food imports. Indeed the clergymen who visited the hostages came away from subsequent meetings with Iranian officials convinced that the Ayatullah is dangerously confused about Western views of the crisis. The clerics wrote him a letter explaining that contrary to the general belief in Iran, the American people strongly support Carter's stand. Said Gumbleton: "We told them they may be misreading the situation, thinking there is a separation between the American people and the Government."

In the U.S., Carter cut short his holiday at Camp David and returned to Washington, where he announced that he was withdrawing from next week's scheduled debate in Iowa with his Democratic rivals for President. He met at the White House with his security advisers on Iran and on the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan (see WORLD). The President was told that his plan to ask the United Nations Security Council to impose economic sanctions against Iran had run into trouble with Third World countries, which wanted to allow more time for a negotiated settlement. As a result, U.S. Ambassador Donald McHenry had been unable to line up the nine votes that would be needed for approval of sanctions. Moreover, time was running out: the U.S. would probably suffer a net loss of one or more votes for sanctions on Jan. 1, when five nonpermanent council members were to be replaced by other nations.

Carter agreed to seek a compromise, but he vowed to the nation in a televised address that the U.S. would continue to follow a "thoughtful and determined policy which makes clear that Iran will continue to pay an increasingly higher price for the illegal detention of our people."

On Saturday, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance sought support for a two-part U.S. proposal in private meetings at the U.N. First, the Security Council would send U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim to Tehran to seek the release of the hostages. Next, if the Waldheim mission did not succeed within a certain number of days, perhaps ten, Iran would be punished by a U.N. trade embargo, exempting only food, Pharmaceuticals and oil. But this approach also ran into opposition from the council's Third World members. They were willing to send Waldheim to Tehran, but they did not want to set a deadline for his mission, or even to specify what would happen if he failed to win the hostages' freedom.

There are, in any event, substantial doubts that a trade embargo would have much effect on Iran's economy. Tehran takes in about $90 million a day from oil exports. For help in handling these transactions, Iran has lately turned to banks in Algeria and Libya, which immediately redeposit the money in European banks. Says a Tehran banker: "There is no shortage of brotherly Third World countries willing to help Iran." In addition, some Eastern European countries, including Rumania and Yugoslavia, have offered to act as Iran's middlemen for purchases of machinery and spare parts. Promised Yugoslav Vice Minister of Commerce Atanas Atanasiveski: "Yugoslavia will do all it can to meet Iran's commercial needs."

A trade embargo would still have a symbolic importance, underscoring Iran's diplomatic isolation from the rest of the world. But punitive measures might endanger the hostages: according to some officials in the Iranian government, they would weaken the position of moderates on the Revolutionary Council.

The Ayatullah has so far spurned any moderate advice. Again and again he has supported the militant students. Some diplomats in Tehran believe he has no choice. Said one: "The students have pushed Khomeini further to the left than he might wish. He obviously would be obeyed if he tells them to do what they don't like. But the costs of doing so are becoming increasingly high for him."

After the four clergymen left Iran, the Ayatullah's Revolutionary Council considered dropping its plans for an international grand jury to investigate U.S. activities in Iran during the 25-year rule of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. The tribunal is intended by the Iranians to arrive at a predetermined verdict: condemnation of the Shah and of the U.S. But some Western diplomats believe that Khomeini would then order the release of the hostages.

"If the U.S. continues to put the pressure on us," said Ghotbzadeh, "I don't see any usefulness to having this grand jury." In that case, he said, the government would go forward with trials of the hostages, a step that the U.S. has warned might lead to the use of military force. When Ghotbzadeh was asked by reporters to say exactly who was in charge of the hostages, he replied: "The students --it's been pretty obvious." Who then will decide the fate of the hostages? Replied Ghotbzadeh: "The students."

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