TEHRAN (Iran News) – In the news reports I read that the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, March 3 approved veteran U.S. diplomat William Burns as the new U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director. One of the important goals of the Democrat Party in the 2020 U.S. presidential election campaign was that Joe Biden had announced he intended to pick Burns as the CIA director. Burns was once deputy secretary of state during Barack Obama’s presidency.

A slight study and investigation will tell us who Burns is and why the Democrat Party and Biden have chosen him for this sensitive post. This pick makes clearer an important part of the change in the U.S. foreign policy. With a short search on the internet, you will notice that Burns retired from the U.S. Department of State in 2014 and was one of the U.S. negotiating team with Iran over its nuclear program and you will also notice why and with what goal he has been picked by Biden for the CIA post.

Burns is a veteran diplomat which has had good relations with Biden in different times. When Biden was the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations chairman, he used to cooperate with Burns. Burns has good interactions with other Biden Administration members especially with National Security Advisor to U.S. President Jake Sullivan.

Media outlets like the New York Times have written on this pick that Biden by choosing Burns has intended to transfer this message to his friends and foes that the CIA is not under influence of the politics. Burns’ experience as a consumer of intelligence and not a producer of intelligence has caused that him becomes the most appropriate choice for this sensitive post because CIA directors are expected to put aside their policy recommendations and focus on information and prediction. Still, former agency officials have asserted the most important quality in a director is not expertise in intelligence, but a relationship with the president, which Mr. Burns has.

In the past, Burns has been part of the U.S. Freemason community and the President of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who had strived for preparing the appropriate economic ground with the symbol of international peace. In 2014 and after 32 years in the U.S. Department of State he retired, and in the past two decades, he has played role in the most important and critical conditions. He was opposed to the U.S. attack on Iraq, and in 2002 he announced explicitly his opposition to it in the U.S. media.

In his profile, it is seen that he has been the U.S. ambassador to Moscow and Jordan. He has also experience as deputy secretary of state in his profile and has served both during the Democrats and Republican rulings. During Obama’s presidency and the nuclear talks with Iran, Burns was in the U.S. negotiating team and he was one of the behind-the-scene influential members of the p5+1 and paved the way for the 2015 nuclear deal.

Appointing Burns who was one of the ardent critics of Donald Trump’s policies like the U.S. pullout of the JCPOA and assassination of Martyr Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani can be interpreted as the shift of the U.S. foreign policy into a different era especially that Trump during his presidency had tried to reduce the importance of the intelligence service officials in the structure of the U.S. policy-making system, and reacting to the analysis about the threat against the U.S. national security by Iran, Trump called the intelligence officials passive and naïve who follow Europe’s path.

In criticizing Trump’s policies, Burns rejects Trump’s maximum pressure on Iran and believes that this incorrect action by Trump has made him fail to materialize his policies against Iran. The Israeli newspaper the Jerusalem Post, which is one of the key Zionist regime newspapers, writes about Burns, “Some former U.S. intelligence officials told the Post Burns also may be more hesitant to take aggressive covert actions and strikes and may express more skepticism about Iran-related intelligence originating from Middle Eastern countries such as Israel.”

With collecting and reading articles on Burns one can have his primary judgment that Burns is a diplomat who enjoys a great deal of respect and credibility among the Democrats and the Republicans and according to the Wall Street Journal, he has a great deal of experience in the security and sensitive fundamentalism.

The essential question which is raised is how Burns can work with Avril Hunter who is Biden’s choice for the National Security Agency (NSA). Biden’s transition team has said that Ms. Hunter will be the top intelligence official in the administration and she does not intend to officially add the CIA to the cabinet.

What will Burns do about Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel? How will he act? And how will he define the strategy for getting close to Iran? Perhaps we may not be able to predict Burn’s four-year policy just in his early days at the CIA but what can be understood from his characteristics and background is that he has changed the open confrontation between the U.S. and China that Trump had concealed behind it, and he will alleviate China’s concern for drawing its reserves from the U.S. and this policy will be able to have a sustainable effect on the declining U.S. economy.

Today the U.S. is facing two important and sometimes contradictory challenges: whether it rebuilds the U.S. reputation or focuses on direct economic goals. In other words, instead of compromising with China, it compromises with Saudi Crown Prince Bin Salman or sacrifice Bin Salman for the U.S. reputation in democracy and human rights issues and seek to save the country’s economy by getting closer to China.