My dad has been left behind as a hostage in Iran by the Biden administration.
The regime in Tehran recently agreed to release five Iranian-American hostages in exchange for $16 billion of its frozen assets currently off limits due to ongoing American sanctions.
Yet my father, Jamshid (Jimmy) Sharmahd, has not been selected to come home — even though he has lived in America for the last 20 years and is a US national.
According to the State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel, my father will remain stuck in an Iranian prison — left out of the current negotiations between Tehran and Washington — because he is a German citizen.
But that does not make sense given that my father is also a US national — both by essence and by law. As a permanent resident of the US, the Levinson Act mandates that he be included as one of the released hostages. The White House must make every effort to bring him home.
So why is the Biden administration leaving my dad behind when he is the only hostage who faces an imminent execution?
My father moved to the United States some 20 years ago and built a good life for himself and his family. A resident of California, he worked hard as a software engineer, paid taxes, and tirelessly advocated for 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 dad emerged as a key target of repeated death threats and in 2009, agents of the regime attempted to hire a hitman and have him assassinated.
A decade later, in 2020, Jimmy was kidnapped while transiting through Dubai in the 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’s been repeatedly tortured and constantly robbed of his rights.
Charged with the nebulous-sounding “corruption on Earth,” he was condemned to death in a sham trial without due process or standard legal representation. What awaits him now is public execution by hanging from a crane.
The lack of humanity and justice is to be expected from one of the most oppressive regimes on earth. But the reaction from my own government in Washington is what truly breaks my heart.
The Biden administration is paying $16 billion in ransom for the release of the hostages, but the White House is running away from its responsibility for my father. Neither President Biden nor Secretary of State Antony Blinken has ever stated his name publicly or shown compassion to the family my father left behind in America.
The White House says it’s not responsible for my dad since he is not a US citizen. This is not just morally wrong — but also legally incorrect.
My dad 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 special presidential envoy for hostage affairs. This means that the US and German governments are compelled to work together to jointly secure his release, instead of denying responsibility and playing ping-pong with his life (Germany has even refused to call my father what he is – a hostage in Iran).
Jimmy would have been able to become a citizen if he had not been kidnapped and imprisoned. Every single member of his family has done so – a total of four generations of Sharmahds who are now US citizens. What does it say about the Biden administration’s moral values when it claims my father is not American enough to stop enduring terror, torture, and likely execution?
My dad has always believed that America stands for freedom and justice, but he has been abandoned by those he trusted most — his own government. He is almost 70 years old, 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 speak to him on the phone for the first time in two years of wrongful detention. He told me “I still have hope in America. Only the American government can save my life.”
But no help from the Biden administration seems to be coming. It breaks my heart that my dad may never be with his family again, to meet my newborn daughter — who is now a fourth-generation US citizen — or see his mother, a late-in-life American who is terrified that her son will be executed.
President Biden and Secretary Blinken, there are no do-overs once an innocent life is taken. So I ask you, will you save my dad from these hostage-takers, or will you leave him behind to die in Iran?
Gazelle Sharmahd is a Los Angeles-based activist, critical care nurse and the daughter of German-American kidnapped hostage Jamshid Sharmahd.
