Born in Ahvaz,[1] Iran, his father Dr. Touraj Parsi[1] was a politically active university professor, at Jondi-Shapoor University of Ahvaz, who had been jailed twice, first by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and then following the Iranian Revolution by Ruhollah Khomeini,[2] and Parsi moved with his family to Sweden at the age of four in order to escape the political repression in Iran.

"[12] In 2007, Arizona-based Iranian-American blogger[13] Hassan Daioleslam began publicly asserting that NIAC was lobbying on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Daioleslam wrote in an internal email, "I strongly believe that Trita Parsi is the weakest part of the Iranian web because he is related to Siamak Namazi and Bob Ney...

In September 2012, a U.S. federal judge John D. Bates threw out the libel suit against Daioleslam on the grounds that "NIAC and Parsi had failed to show evidence of actual malice, either that Daioeslam acted with knowledge the allegations he made were false or with reckless disregard about their accuracy."

Parsi's work is an expansion of his 2006 Ph.D. dissertation writing at Johns Hopkins University under the supervision of his Ph.D. adviser Francis Fukuyama.

[19] The book "takes a closer look at the complicated triangular relations between Israel, Iran, and the United States that continue to shape the future of the Middle East.

Parsi, noted Thrall, believes that "the internal dynamics of states (i.e., their ideology, system of governance, ethnic makeup, class structure, and religion), while important, 'have little or no impact on their respective foreign policies.'"

Israel, for instance, who had sought to frame its rivalry with Iran as a struggle between the region's sole Western democracy against a fanatical Islamic tyranny, favored the status quo in Egypt and opposed the efforts to oust Mubarak."

He argues that the way forth is through sustained diplomacy that he considers "the only policy that remains largely unexplored and that has a likelihood of achieving results amounting to more than kicking the can down the road.

"[24] Julian Borger wrote in The Guardian that A Single Roll of the Dice is "A carefully balanced and thoroughly researched account of the tortured US-Iranian relationship in recent years.

"[26] Reviewing the book in The Wall Street Journal, Sohrab Ahmari faults Parsi for failing to "re-examine U.S. policy and its underlying assumptions."

Instead, he writes, "Quick to ascribe irrationality and bad faith to opponents of engagement, Mr. Parsi is charitable when it comes to examining the motivations of the Iranian side."