Trita Parsi, leader of the National Iranian American Council. Photo: Twitter.

On Wednesday, June 18, 2014, The Huffington Post once again gave front-page positioning to an outrageous editorial by the notorious Trita Parsi, President of the National Iranian American Council.

In case you aren’t familiar with Parsi, as noted by The Legal Project, in 2012 he was revealed in federal court to have “deep and incontrovertible ties to high-level agents of the Iranian regime,” and was ordered to pay nearly $200,000 to an investigative reporter whom he sued, for making this allegation. (Read more documentation asserting Parsi’s and the NIAC’s history of shilling for the Iranian regime here and here.)

Despite this, as documented in The Algemeiner, in December 2013 HuffPostpositioned at the top of its front page a scorching attack by Parsi on U.S. senators who insisted on tough sanctions against Iran, until it stops developing nuclear weapons.

In this latest incident, HuffPost enabled Parsi to whitewash Iran, vis a vis the rapidly-imploding situation in Iraq – and to implicitly assail those who expose the actual, murderous nature and actions of the Iranian regime.  A few excerpts:

• “[The] reality is that Iran and the U.S. need each other. And both of them need to recognize the other’s ability to play a stabilizing role.”
• “Iran has signaled openness to U.S. strikes in Iraq shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom in Washington, Iran is either not seeking hegemony in the region and/or is incapable of materializing such a desire. The scaremongering about Iran’s intents and capabilities are put in check by these recent events.”
• “Had the US and Iran collaborated rather than competed with each other in the region in the past few years, ISIS would likely never have managed to pose this challenge.”

Amidst this “kumbaya”-like rhetoric, neither Parsi nor HuffPost mentioned Iran’s long history of not only destabilizing Iraq – but its vital role in the murders of scores of American and Iraqi soldiers:

• August 2007: A senior U.S. military commander accused Iranian military forces of training Iraqi insurgents to attack coalition forces in Iraq.  A military spokesperson said that in the previous four months, American forces found 217 weapons in four provinces that that bore Iranian markings.
• October 2008: U.S. military officials announced that coalition troops in Iraq captured a suspected financier and four other individuals associated with the Iranian-backed Kata’ib Hezbollah, a militant group responsible for the murders of American and Iraqi soldiers, and a series of bombings on July 4 that killed 16 Iraqi civilians and injured 29.
• May 2009: A stockpile of weapons was discovered in a majority-Shiite area that borders Iran. Among the items recovered, according a report by the Counterterrorism Center at West Point, were “150 copper plates for use in explosively-formed projectile (EFP) roadside bombs, which have the highest per-incident lethality rate of any explosive device used in Iraq. Along with the professionally-milled copper cones were 70 passive infrared firing switches used to precisely detonate EFP devices as vehicles enter the killing zone.” The materials had been supplied by Iran to Shiite insurgents in Iraq that were killing U.S. and Iraqi soldiers.
• October 2010: Former Iraqi PM Allawi spoke out about Iran’s relentless efforts to destabilize Iraq. “We know that unfortunately, Iran is trying to wreak havoc on the region, and trying to destabilize the region by destabilizing Iraq, and destabilizing Lebanon and destabilizing the Palestinian issue,” Allawi said.  The region is “falling victim” to terrorist groups backed financially by Iran, he said.
• December 2010: According to WikiLeaks, Iraqi PM Maliki orchestrated a purge of security forces and installed inexperienced Shi’a officers in the name of de-Baathification. In one of the purges, Maliki fired 36 officers from the national intelligence directorate, and placed 47 new Shiite officers in the agency, many of whom had previously lived in Iran.
• July 2011: U.S. officials reported conclusive proof that Iran was both training and arming Iraqi insurgents with weaponry that led to increasingly deadly, precise attacks on American and Iraqi soldiers.  According to The Wall Street Journal, “Iran’s elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps… has smuggled rocket-assisted exploding projectiles to its militia allies in Iraq, weapons that have already resulted in the deaths of American troops, defense officials said. They said Iranians have also given long-range rockets to the Taliban in Afghanistan, increasing the insurgents’ ability to hit U.S. and other coalition positions from a safer distance… In June, 15 U.S. servicemen died in Iraq, the highest monthly casualty figure there in more than two years. The U.S. has attributed all the attacks to Shiite militias it says are are trained by the (Iranian) Revolutionary Guards.”
• February 2014: Iran signed a deal to sell Iraq arms and ammunition worth $195 million, in violation of international arms trade laws. A White House spokesperson said the Obama administration had raised concerns about the deal “at the highest level” in Iraq. As Maliki continued his battle against tribal groups and Sunni militants, analysts assessed that Iran was continuing to funnel weapons and support toward Shi’ite militia groups who have increasingly become a destabilizing force in Iraq.

In The Wizard of Oz, the title character proclaims, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! The Great Oz has spoken!”

In our world, HuffPost seems to think we are too stupid to recognize that it continues to act as a shill for Iran and other militant Islamist groups.  It’s up to those who are committed to the truth to pull back the curtain, and accept the fact that despite Parsi’s protestations, Iran is the world’s leading terror state, and is playing a vital role in the carnage now playing out in Iraq.

“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.