IN JANUARY 2015, as Islamic State militants were waging an offensive across Iraq and Syria, an Iranian intelligence officer known among his colleagues by the code name Boroujerdi sat down for a meeting with an important official: then-Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.
The meeting, held at Abadi’s office in Iraq’s presidential palace in Baghdad, took place “without the presence of a secretary or a third person,” according to a report about the discussion contained in a leaked archive of cables from Iran’s shadowy Ministry of Intelligence and Security.