A screenshot of the headline and accompanying picture and article that was deemed offensive by Jewish groups.

On December 19, the Huffington Post published an article that smeared Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) as a “saboteur,” and alleged that he and AIPAC are leading the U.S. into a war with Iran. The reason for this shocking, inflammatory headline and  “news” story?  Because Menendez and AIPAC dare to oppose the Obama Administration’s “deal” with the Iranian regime over its nuclear weapons program. As many have noted, a broad swath of Congressional representatives from both parties also oppose this “deal,” as do Elie Wiesel and other (credible) human rights activists.

As if this naked, inflammatory partisanship wasn’t bad enough for a self-proclaimed “nonpartisan” newspaper, it actually gets far worse. According to the Huffington Post’s “news” article, its source for this assessment was a “report” that was recently produced by a panel of “Iran experts.”  From the article:

Numerous Iran experts have decried the Senate’s attempts to impose new sanctions as a possible death blow to the first detente between the U.S. and Iran over its nuclear program.

“This would be a direct violation of the Geneva deal which would cause the collapse of the talks not due to Iranian sabotage, but American foul play,” said Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, which advocates better relations between Iran and the West. […]

On Wednesday, the NIAC released a new report examining the roots of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s recent outreach to the west — and its fragility.

But wait – who is Trita Parsi, and what is the National Iranian American Council (NIAC)?   The Legal Project, a nonprofit that helps defend anti-terrorism researchers from retaliatory lawsuits by radical Islamists, claims Parsi and NIAC have “deep and incontrovertible ties to high-level agents of the Iranian regime,” and that this assertion was proved accurate in a September 2012 U.S. federal district court ruling:

Trita Parsi sued Seid Hassan Daioleslam for defamation in April, 2008 after Mr. Dai’s investigative reporting exposed Parsi’s and NIAC’s deep and incontrovertible ties to high-level agents of the Iranian regime. The suit went through 53 months of litigation that included 24 months of discovery and over 30 court motions. These ultimately confirmed the accuracy of Mr. Dai’s investigative reports.

The case reached national prominence when Parsi’s e-mails (produced during discovery) not only confirmed his ties to the mullahs but also that he has delivered lectures to the CIA, briefed Secretary Hilary Clinton and visited the Obama White House starting in 2009. […]

Federal District Court Judge John B. Bates for the District of Columbia yesterday granted summary judgment for Seid Hassan Daioleslam, editor of the English Iranian Lobby website “In Search of Truth: Reports on Mullahs’s lobby in US,” the defendant in a defamation suit brought by Trita Parsi and the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). Judge Bates also ordered sanctions against Parsi for failure to comply with the discovery phase of the litigation.

See an April 2013 follow-up analysis of Parsi v. Daioleslam by the Legal Project here.

The Huffington Post not only never ran a news story revealing the shocking facts concerning Parsi and the NIAC, but it has published sixteen of Parsi’s articles since the Federal court’s September 2012 ruling (it’s been running his editorials since April 2012).  And as HUFF-WATCH documented here, even after the court’s ruling, Huffington Post has continued enabling the NIAC to spew its pro-Iranian, anti-Israel propaganda.

On December 18, the Huffington Post gave Parsi the top spot on “blogger’s row” on its front page, a space normally reserved for Arianna Huffington, and her newspaper’s most prominent opinion writers.

The very next day, on December 19, Huffington Post published the inflammatory headline story alleging that Menendez and AIPAC were “saboteurs.”

How does one reconcile these acts and omissions with the public statements that Huffington has made about her “newspaper’s” journalistic integrity and principles?

• “[T]oo many reporters have forgotten that the highest calling of journalists is to ferret out the truth, consequences be damned.” – Arianna Huffington, July 29, 2008
• “[At HuffPost] there are guidelines that have to be followed — and they include a prohibition on conspiracy theories or inflammatory claims.” – Arianna Huffington, February 1, 2010
• “[W]e are increasingly seen … as an Internet newspaper, not positioned ideologically in terms of how we cover the news.” – Arianna Huffington, May 22, 2009

Perhaps one day, someone in a position of influence will ask Huffington about all that.

“HuffWatcher” is the anonymous creator and editor of HUFF-WATCH, a blog primarily dedicated to conducting deep investigative research on Huffington Post’s anti-Israel, pro-Islamist bias. Contact: huffwatcher1@gmail.com.