WASHINGTON: The night before a round of high-stakes nuclear talks with Iran, US President Barack Obama told his chief of staff he had “absolute confidence we have the right team on the field”. Obama was not referring to his public negotiating team, led by senior State Department official Wendy Sherman, nor even to his secretary of state, John Kerry, who was soon to sweep in from Tel Aviv to join the early November discussions in Geneva.

Rather, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough recalled, Obama was talking about a secret group led by Bill Burns, Kerry’s discreet, disciplined and self-effacing deputy.

At times using US military aircraft, hotel side entrances and service elevators to keep his role under wraps, Burns undertook arguably the most sensitive diplomatic mission of Obama’s presidency: secret talks with Iran to persuade it to curb its nuclear programme.

In picking Burns, seen by his peers as a leading US diplomat of his generation, Obama gave the envoy, who speaks Arabic, French and Russian, a chance to ease more than 30 years of estrangement between the United States and Iran.

If it ensures Tehran does not build a nuclear bomb, the Iran deal could stand as the capstone to Burns’ 31-year diplomatic career. If it fails, it could bring Israel or the US closer to a military strike on Iran and fuel criticism that Washington squandered its best opportunity for a peaceful solution by appeasing Iran rather than pressuring it further.

Current and former US officials describe Burns as well suited to dealing with the Iranians, with the sensitivity to see Tehran’s perspective and the tenacity not to compromise US interests.

“He is steady, reliable, intelligent, disciplined and — in his understated way — persuasive,” said former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Even those who square off across the table speak well of Burns. He “knows Iran very well and also understands Iran’s culture, expectations and position in the region,” said a senior Iranian official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Burns, 57, who has a lanky frame that he used to good effect on the basketball court in his youth, has executed the rarest of Washington careers. He has taken on politically perilous assignments such as heading the State Department’s Middle East shop during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, all without a hint of personal failure or personal controversy.

Running the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, which handles Middle East policy, from 2001-2005 made him a participant in the epic struggles between the State and Defence Departments over the war and its aftermath.

Over the past nine months, Burns, along with Jake Sullivan, Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, met secretly with Iranian officials five times in Oman and Switzerland.

Their assignment became public only when Tehran and six major powers reached a Nov 24 agreement for Iran to constrain its nuclear programme for six months in exchange for sanctions relief.

Critics have targeted the deal rather than Burns. Some argue that the sanctions relief is worth more than the White House says, and will undercut US economic leverage on Iran.

Former President George W. Bush was sceptical of talking directly about the nuclear issue with Iran. But in 2008, his final year in office, Bush sent Burns to meet with the Iranians, joining envoys from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.

“There was some scepticism in some quarters of the administration,” former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. “When I said to the president, ‘Well it’s going to be Bill Burns,’ he said: ‘He’ll be able to handle it.’”

Burns’ understated style was evident as an honors student at Philadelphia’s LaSalle University, which his father, an Army general and former head of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, also attended.

“Bill would sit with his head looking down at the floor and I don’t think he ever took a note,” said George Stow, who teaches history at LaSalle. “I thought, this boy’s in trouble come the first exam.” “I opened the blue book for the first exam and it was astounding. It was page after page after page and filled with references and quotations from books and sources that I had never mentioned,” he added.

Burns has had an almost gilded career, spent more in Washington than abroad. A string of staff jobs put Burns at the right hand of officials such as Colin Powell, President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, and Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright when they were secretaries of state.

Richard Armitage, Powell’s deputy secretary of state, said Burns was part of a State Department leadership team that did not so much oppose the 2003 Iraq invasion, as favoured a less unilateral approach to ousting dictator Saddam Hussein.

While known for his courtesy, Burns is not shy about advocating for his preferred policies. Jim Jeffrey, Bush’s deputy national security adviser, said Burns had swum against the tide in a sceptical Republican administration to make the case for engaging Tehran.

“He pushed very hard in 2008 to have contact with the Iranians,” making his case through then Secretary of State Rice and informally lobbying the national security council staff, Jeffrey said. Those 2008

dealings with the Iranians helped pave the way to the November nuclear deal, Jeffrey said.—Reuters