As NIAC prepared its duplicitous campaign to scuttle the appointment of Dennis Ross as the Obama administration’s envoy to Iran, Trita Parsi and his policy director, Patrick Disney, conferred with their allies on two separate listservs to devise a strategy. The date was January 7, 2009, and as the administration started floating names to reporters, Disney suggested that the group and its allies (which presumably included J Street, already a participant in NIAC’s Campaign for a New American Policy in Iran) to “start a conversation about what our response will be if Dennis Ross is named Iran envoy.” Disney explained that “NIAC is obviously still formulating a plan, but we’re exploring the idea of coming out publicly, and relatively strongly, against Ross.” In the end, NIAC decided not to come out publicly against Ross, choosing instead to lobby Congress and the administration behind closed doors while sending out fundraising appeals casting Ross as a fellow proponent of engagement and a victim of the same “smears” being launched against NIAC. Disney concludes that “if it’s simply impossible for us to work with Ross, we should be in a position to say I told you so after he messes everything up.” Eleven months later and everything is messed up, but not because of Ross. Indeed it seems like NIAC’s strategy of engagement minus sanctions has not produced any result other than providing the Iranian regime with more time to work on their nuclear weapons program and kill dissidents. But Parsi was acutely aware of the fact that on this issue, like so many others, his views closely resembled those of the regime in Tehran. Parsi wrote,