The White House declined to say whether President Joe Biden’s spy chief met with Iranian officials in Iraq amid tensions surrounding nuclear talks and an attack on the Middle Eastern country’s illicit weapons program.
Asked whether William Burns, director of the CIA, had traveled to Baghdad in recent days and met with officials from the government in Tehran, White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
“I would point you to the CIA for confirmation of anything about his schedule,” Psaki told the Washington Examiner.
Citing multiple sources in a report for online foreign policy publication 19FortyFive, Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said Burns had met with Iranian officials in the home of Iraq’s foreign minister, Fuad Hussein.
A CIA spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that reports of a meeting are false and declined to comment on Burns’ schedule.
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A veteran diplomat, Burns was confirmed by the Senate as CIA director by unanimous consent in March. His nomination before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence also drew unanimous approval.
A spokesperson for the Intelligence Committee’s chairman, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, declined to comment when asked whether the panel or any senators were given advance notice of the alleged meeting.
Burns was an early negotiator of the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, to which Biden officials are seeking a return.
Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the United States and other world powers had agreed to lift sanctions on Iran in exchange for limits on its nuclear program, but former President Donald Trump reimposed sanctions in 2018 and withdrew from the agreement.
Biden pledged to return to the 2015 deal on the campaign trail and, upon taking office, appointed a special envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, who recently led the U.S. in a series of indirect talks with Iran and all other signatories in Vienna.
Negotiations, which began in late March, were interrupted by an attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, believed to have come from Israel, which has opposed a return to the deal. The negotiations resumed in April.
Asked whether Burns had met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who was in Iraq on Monday and was a top Iranian negotiator for the deal, Psaki demurred.
“Again, I’d point you to, to the CIA and his team there for any details of his schedule,” she said.
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National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne likewise referred questions to Burns’s agency.
“We won’t have anything here and would refer to the CIA,” Horne said.
