Admin Biden forgot Jamshid Sharmahd in Iran

My father was held hostage in Iran by the Biden administration.

Tehran’s regime recently agreed to release five Iranian-American hostages in exchange for $16 billion of its frozen assets, currently prohibited due to ongoing US sanctions.

Yet my father, Jamshid (Jimmy) Sharmahd, was not selected to return home – even though he has lived in America for 20 years and is an American national.

According to State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel, my father will remain stuck in an Iranian prison — excluded from ongoing negotiations between Tehran and Washington — because he is a German citizen.

But that doesn’t make sense given that my father is also an American national – both in essence and by law. As a permanent resident of the United States, Levinson law requires that he be included among the released hostages. The White House must do everything possible to bring him home.

So why is the Biden administration leaving my father behind when he is the only hostage facing imminent execution?

My dad moved to the United States about 20 years ago and built a great life for himself and his family. A California resident, he worked hard as a software engineer, paid taxes, and tirelessly defended the freedom of the Iranian people.

As part of his advocacy, my father developed an online platform detailing the regime’s crimes and human rights abuses, which became a thorn in the eyes of the ruling theocracy. Unsurprisingly, my father became a prime target for repeated death threats, and in 2009 regime agents attempted to hire a hitman and have him assassinated.

A decade later, in 2020, Jimmy was kidnapped while transiting through Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and taken to Iran.

Since then, he has been held in solitary confinement for more than 1,000 days in an unknown prison where, according to Amnesty International, he was repeatedly tortured and deprived of his rights.

Accused of “corruption on Earth,” which seems nebulous, he was sentenced to death in a show trial without due process or standard legal representation. What awaits him now is a public execution by hanging from a crane.

Expect a lack of humanity and justice from one of the most oppressive regimes on the planet. But it’s my own government’s reaction in Washington that really breaks my heart.

The Biden administration pays $16 billion in ransom for the hostages’ release, but the White House shirks responsibility for my father. Neither President Biden nor Secretary of State Antony Blinken ever spoke his name publicly or showed compassion to the family my father left behind in America.

The White House says it’s not responsible for my dad since he’s not a US citizen. This is not only morally wrong, but also legally wrong.

My father enjoys German citizenship but – as a permanent US resident – ​​is also a US national under the Levinson Act and must be protected by the US President’s special envoy for hostage cases. This means that the US and German governments are forced to work together to secure his release, instead of denying responsibility and playing ping-pong with his life (Germany even refused to call my father what he is – a hostage in Iran).

Jimmy could have become a citizen if he hadn’t been kidnapped and imprisoned. Every member of his family did – a total of four generations of Sharmahds who are now US citizens. What does it say about the moral values ​​of the Biden administration when it claims that my father is not American enough to stop suffering terror, torture and probably execution?

My father always believed that America stood for freedom and justice, but he was let down by those he trusted most: his own government. He is nearly 70, can barely walk and suffers from advanced Parkinson’s disease, but he refuses to give up hope in the United States.

I was recently able to talk to him on the phone for the first time in two years of wrongful detention. He said to me, “I still have hope in America. Only the US government can save my life.

But no help from the Biden administration seems to be coming. It breaks my heart that my father may never be with his family again, to meet my newborn daughter – who is now a fourth-generation US citizen – or to see her mother, a dying American who is terrified that her son would. be executed.

President Biden and Secretary Blinken, there is no overhaul once an innocent life is taken. So I’m asking you, are you going to save my father from those hostage takers, or are you going to let him die in Iran?

Gazelle Sharmahd is a Los Angeles-based activist, intensive care nurse and the daughter of German-American hostage Jamshid Sharmahd.