Jamshid Sharmahd, West-backed terror ringleader behind 2008 Shiraz mosque bombing

By Press TV Staff Writer 

Jamshid Sharmahd, a self-proclaimed monarchist and ringleader of a Western-backed terrorist group who played a key role in the 2008 Shiraz mosque bombing and other acts of terrorism on the soil of the Islamic Republic was executed on Tuesday.

Tehran Prosecutor-General's office released a statement announcing the execution of the notorious terrorist in line with the verdict issued in February last year.

The statement noted that Sharmahd "planned several terrorist operations against our dear Islamic country, Iran, at the behest of his masters in Western and American spy organizations, and the child-killing Zionist regime."

Sharmahd, a German citizen and US resident was the ringleader of a pro-monarchist terrorist group known in Iran for organizing and carrying out numerous deadly terrorist attacks against civilians.

Who was Jamshid Sharmahd?

Born in Iran in 1955, Sharmahd moved to Germany with his father at age 18, during the West-backed imposed war. In Germany, he studied electrical engineering and later joined the software industry.

He acquired German citizenship in 1995 and eight years later obtained a US green card, eventually settling in Los Angeles, California as an American citizen.

Shortly after arriving in the US, together with other expats, he co-founded the extremist monarchist organization known as Tondar (Thunder) or the Kingdom Assembly of Iran (API).

This group espoused anachronistic monarchism aimed at erasing Iran’s Islamic history of 1400 years and taking the country back to its ancient and dark past through acts of violence and terrorism.

According to his personal statements at trial, Sharmahd confessed, "We are clearly anti-Islamic; we have come to annihilate Islam and Islamic authorities."

Due to their fanatical approach, the group members attracted only a handful of followers—mostly diaspora supporters in the US, Germany, the UK, and a few within Iran— who were prepared to carry out violent acts against their own countrymen for money and foreign passport.

One of the founding members, Fathollah Manouchehri (also known as Frood Fouladvand), based in London, disappeared under mysterious circumstances in Turkey in late 2007.

Connections with Western governments

The group ran Persian-language satellite channels Your TV from London and later Radio Tondar from Los Angeles, using these to reach and recruit rabble-rousers and terrorists inside Iran.

Their broadcast reach and limited resources hinted at substantial funding from undisclosed Western sources, especially the American and British governments.

The close ties of the terrorist group to Western regimes were evidenced by Manouchehri’s appearance in interviews with Voice of America (VOA), the US government’s media outlet.

Iran’s judiciary and intelligence services as well as top political authorities had repeatedly highlighted the group’s connections to US authorities and their collaboration in anti-Iran activities.

Sharmahd also launched and ran the group's (now defunct) official website tondar.org, an undeniable fact evident on its "contact us" section, signed as Jamshid in German, as well as in his biography on the new, whitewashed website tondar.info.

The online archives of the old website provide insight into his open acceptance of responsibility for terrorist attacks, glorification of them and threats of new ones, which his supporters tried to deny and conceal after his arrest.

Sharmahd's role in terrorist attacks

Iranian judicial authorities charged Sharmahd with masterminding multiple terrorist attacks within Iran, including the 2008 bombing at the Seyyed-ol-Shohada mosque in the southern city of Shiraz.

About 800 worshipers were attending a sermon by Seyyed Mohammad Anjavinejad, head cleric of the Rahpouyan Vesal Cultural Center when a powerful bomb exploded.

The explosion injured 215 and martyred 14 people, including five women, two children and an infant, making it one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Iranian history.

According to investigators, the British-made 8-pound bomb was detonated by remote control and was enough to kill a thousand people, but the placement of the explosive next to the column and the way the building collapsed limited the casualties.

In the initial chaos, there was speculation that the explosion may have been the result of an accident with careless storage of military exhibits from the Imposed War exhibit, but that possibility was quickly ruled out.

Later, the perpetrators of the bombing were identified and pursued by the Iranian intelligence ministry, and the main perpetrator who was planning similar attacks in other parts of the country was arrested.

The spokesman of the judiciary announced the arrest of several other perpetrators and said they had weapons, ammunition, bomb-making equipment and cyanide and operated under the Tondar group.

In November 2008, a court in Tehran sentenced to death three field operatives responsible for the attack, Mohsen Eslamian, Ali Asghar Pashtar and Rouzbeh Yahyazadeh, and the sentences were carried out two years later.

Confession and claims of responsibility

Immediately following the Shiraz bombing, Sharmahd claimed responsibility under a pseudonym on his website, calling it a "courageous attack,” the mosque a "terrorist center" and praising a large number of civilian casualties as alleged "regime mercenaries."

He stated that the Shiraz attack was only the first stage in the "liberation of Iran" and promised to continue the attacks, threatening the same "mercenaries" with the same fate if they did not stop supporting the democratically-elected Islamic Republic government.

Five days later, in a similar statement published in Persian, German and English, he explicitly denied speculation that the explosion was the result of military exhibits and again claimed responsibility for the attack that he claimed had "shaken the government."

In the same statement, he also claimed responsibility for the fire at the Alborz rubber factory, and announced new attacks and added that Tondar members were training in the handling of firearms and cold weapons.

Two months later, he again claimed responsibility, denying speculation by Radio France and Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Baloch extremists were behind the attack.

Ironically, the Sharmahd's apologists and the editors of his biography on the new Tondar website now offer a diametrically opposite version, denying responsibility and claiming that the government baselessly tried to pin it on them.

Iranian intelligence services arrested Sharmahd in July 2020, after luring him to a neighboring country where he was supposed to meet with supporters about organizing new terrorist attacks.

During trial, he admitted that his group's planned operations included carrying out an explosion in Sivand Dam near Shiraz, exploding cyanide bombs at the Tehran Book Fair and blowing up bombs at Imam Khomeini shrine during a public ceremony.

His confession was backed by his earlier posts on the website from 2006 when he claimed that units of his group carried out sabotage at the Sivand Dam.

This dam has been the subject of debunked monarchist conspiracy theories about the government's planned submersion of ancient archeological sites, and they also claimed in an equally ridiculous way that Iran was helping Osama bin Laden to hide.

Western efforts to free Sharmahd

Immediately after the Iranian authorities announced in August 2020 that Sharmahd had been arrested and jailed, a campaign was launched in Western media and political circles to free him and to smear Iran.

They talked about an "unjust arrest," an "innocent man" and a "sham trial.” Some went on to distort reality they called him a "dissident," "activist" or "fighter for human rights."

Individuals who came to his defense include leading German politicians Annalena Baerbock, Friedrich Merz and Olaf Scholz, as well as organizations such as the British Amnesty International, and even the European Council.

A special case is represented by his daughter Gazelle Sharmahd, who, with the help of Zionist connections, lobbied for his release all the way to the American Congress.

In the last four years, Gazelle has been seen in the company of anti-Iran lobbyists and on social networks she never misses an opportunity to vilify Iran and glorify the Israeli regime, including amid the ongoing genocidal war on Gaza and Lebanon.

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