The invisible man: Bill Burns and the secret Iran talks

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.