Iranian-American activist Gazelle Sharmahd speaks out on her dissident father’s kidnapping

“For most people, Dubai is a vacation destination, but for us, it’s always been a place where anti-regime dissidents disappear,” explained Gazelle Sharmahd, an anti-Islamic Republic activist whose father was kidnapped from Dubai four years ago, strikingly resembling the kidnapping and murder of Rabbi Tzvi Kogan from the UAE.

“I was originally a nurse,” Sharmahd explained, “but when my father was kidnapped, I became a hundred percent dedicated to fighting for him and others like him. This has become my life’s mission.”

Gazelle’s father, Jamshid Sharmahd, had left Iran for Germany at age seven, before the Islamic Revolution – described by Gazelle as an Islamo-Marxist coup. He later went back to Iran and got married, only to return to Germany after witnessing the regime’s brutality. “He saw the country being taken by jihadists,” she explained. “There were executions in the streets, there was much chaos. The atmosphere was terrible, so he took his family and left.”

Later on, the Sharmahd family moved from Germany to Los Angeles, but despite leaving the homeland behind, Jamshid was always outspoken against the Islamic Republic’s regime, which plausibly led to his name being on the regime’s “blacklist.”

“We’re strong believers in democracy and human rights,” Sharmahd continued. “Unfortunately, the Islamic regime makes it clear that we are not wanted there.”

Tracked to Oman, kidnapped to Iran

Gazelle’s father, Jamshid, was kidnapped by the Islamic Republic in 2020 and was announced as executed by the regime on October 28, on what should have been a routine business trip to India. “The last time we spoke to him was July 28, 2020, from his hotel in Dubai. His connecting flight was delayed so he stayed there. We haven’t heard of him since,” she said.

Jamshid had been wearing a Google tracker, which allowed the family to follow his abduction in real time. At first, the family had hoped that the detour was due to a rerouted flight, and they even got a message from Jamshid saying that all was in order, a message which turned out to be dictated by his kidnappers.

“Then sometime later we received the news: the Islamic Republic had published pictures of him arrested with handcuffs and his eyes covered,” she recalled. “We knew nothing about his condition or whereabouts. He wasn’t even held in the infamous Evin prison, where families at least know where their loved ones are. He was simply kept in an unknown location.”

Once this footage of Jamshid emerged, the family started calling everyone: embassies of Oman, UAE, Germany, and the US, the Interpol – but to no avail. “Who do you even call when states become kidnappers? There’s no playbook for this,” Sharmahd said.

The Islamic Republic’s international operations are no shock to her. “In the 90s, there were hundreds of cases of the regime assassinating its enemies abroad. And it now looks like they’re returning to these tactics of terror,” she explained. “They attempted to assassinate my father in 2009, and they’ve tried to kill others – Trump, Irwin Cotler, Masih Alinejad, all across the world. They hunt anyone they consider an enemy of jihadism. This is not a state, this is a predator.”

However, if Gazelle had expected that a personal story of her father’s kidnapping would garner any empathy, nothing could prepare her for the frustrating uphill battle her family and she had to wage against traditional media and international organizations. 

“When my father was first taken and I started to speak out, I felt like I was blocked by the media. We saw the regime’s narrative being repeated worldwide, calling my father a ‘terrorist’ as if he had been arrested in Iran. We were going crazy, sending emails to The New York Times, The Washington Post, asking why they were publishing the regime’s narrative when the Islamic regime were the ones who had violated international law.”

Sharmahd and her family refused to remain silent. “We started a YouTube podcast named ‘War & Freedom: Insight Talks,’” speaking with Iranian exiles, with minorities in the Middle East who are oppressed under these evil regimes,” she explained. “These are the ‘bad people’ according to the regime.”

The family ended up spending two years fighting for a UN investigation. “Even after our stories were verified by the UN and other human rights organizations such as Amnesty [International], the media still repeated the regime’s propaganda,” Sharmahd said. “They copy-paste whatever the regime says. Just like what they’re doing with Gaza now. We must remember that these are terrorists, and lying is what they do.”

Between Gaza and Iran

Sharmahd drew alarming parallels between various hostage situations in the Middle East, including the Hamas attacks against Israel last year. “Hamas didn’t just kill; they deliberately took 250 hostages because they saw it was good business,” she explained. 

“Only a couple of weeks prior to that, the Biden Administration had released $6 billion to the Islamic regime in Iran through Qatari banks. When a regime can kidnap German American citizens such as my father without any consequences, they see it as a green light to continue targeting activists and journalists.”

Sharmahd emphasized the need for international solidarity.

“The people in Israel and Iran understand each other. We’re not enemies – we’re all victims of jihadist regimes that oppress our people, the native populations throughout the Middle East,” she said. “We need to unite and tell these stories. I have friends among Israeli hostage families and among hostage families held by other regimes.

What’s crucial is that we need an international task force dealing with hostages. These regimes use hostages to extort governments. This is the regime’s business model ever since the 1979 American embassy crisis, and for them, it pays off. Instead of wide international pressure, each country negotiates its own small ‘deal,’ only feeding the regime more.”

In this context, Sharmahd further called for a united international response to state-sponsored kidnapping.

“Why is all the pressure on Israel? We have 45 countries whose citizens were kidnapped or hurt in some way on October 7. Why aren’t they all pushing together?” she asked. “Instead, we’re paralyzing Israel, the only people actually doing something to return the hostages!

“My father didn’t need to speak out. He had all his rights in Germany and the US. He was a software engineer; he could have lived like any European or American,” she said. “But because of his connection to people in Iran, he saw the threat. He decided he had a responsibility to act toward justice in the world. If you think for a moment that you don’t have responsibility, you’re wrong. Silence helps the oppressors.”

Sharmahd concluded with an urgent plea to support “the freedom fighters” in Iran. “Freedom fighters in Iran are facing genocide – the regime kills a freedom fighter every six hours because they’re a threat to the jihadists,” she warned.

“If we don’t pressure Western governments, they’ll be eliminated like other peoples in the Middle East. We must protect them. People like my father are rare in the Middle East, but they exist, and we must help them. We must protect them and amplify their voices.”