Hardline Iranian presidential candidate Saeed Jalili has said… of Tehran For years he was the top nuclear negotiator, but he won no praise from Western diplomats, as he repeatedly lectured them on everything while offering nothing.
Jalili said then, “Just as the weaving of Iranian carpets is progressing in a millimeter-to-millimeter, precise, delicate and durable manner, God willing, this diplomatic process will also proceed in the same way.”
In 2008 the talks came to a halt due to a hardening of the stance taken after several hours of lectures. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad And Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pushed the country’s nuclear program. That led to increased Western pressure that eventually eased after Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers lifted sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
A supporter of Iranian presidential candidate Saeed Jalili holds a poster of Jalili during his campaign in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, June 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Now Jalili, 58, stands to be elected as Iran’s next president as he faces heart surgeon Masoud Pezeshkian, a little-known reformist, in a runoff election on Friday. With Iran’s nuclear program enriching uranium close to weapons-grade levels, a Jalili victory could again stall already stalled talks.
Meanwhile, Jalili’s own hardline vision for Iran – which has been derided by opponents as a ‘radical’ style for Iran – has been derided as a ‘radical’ style for Iran. Taliban — There is also a risk of public anger being fuelled by a bloody crackdown by security forces in 2022 following protests over the death of Mahsa Amini. She died in police custody after being detained for allegedly improperly wearing a mandatory hijab.
Jalili, known for his white hair and beard, is known as a “living martyr” because he lost his right leg at the age of 21 during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. He was born on September 6, 1965 in Mashhad, a Shia holy city, to a Kurdish father who was a French teacher and school principal and an Azeri mother.
Jalili worked as a university professor with a doctorate degree before joining Iran’s Foreign Ministry, rising to a top position before joining Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and becoming the country’s top nuclear negotiator under Ahmadinejad from 2007 to 2013.
He made an immediate impression on his Western counterparts, with then-negotiator, now CIA Director William Burns, calling him a “true believer in the Iranian revolution.”
“When he wanted to avoid giving a direct answer, he would be extremely vague, and this was certainly one of those occasions,” Burns recalled of one meeting. “He once told me that he still lectured part-time at the University of Tehran. I was not jealous of his students.”
An unnamed French diplomat quoted at the time described one round of Jalili’s talks as a “disaster”.
Another EU diplomat offered a similar assessment in a 2008 U.S. diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks.
“An EU official who attended Jalili’s private and public meetings that day was surprised by his inability or unwillingness to depart from his presentation or provide any nuances, and called him a ‘true product of the Iranian revolution,'” the cable said, without naming the diplomat.
Jalili was later ousted after coming in third in Iran’s 2013 presidential election to relatively moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani, himself a former nuclear negotiator. Rouhani’s administration secured the 2015 nuclear deal, under which Iran significantly reduced the size and purity of its stockpile of enriched uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Jalili strongly opposed the deal and formed a “shadow government” during Rouhani’s reign to undermine his efforts. Jalili was also supported in 2013 by the late hardline Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, who once wrote that Iran should not deprive itself of the right to build “special weapons” – an indirect reference to nuclear weapons.
Iran has long insisted that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
However, U.N. inspectors and Western nations say Iran had an organized military nuclear program as early as 2003. In recent months, Iranian officials have made frequent threats about Iran’s bomb-making capability as it enriches uranium to 60% purity, a small, technical step short of reaching weapons-grade 90%.
Meanwhile, Pezeshkian’s advocates have said Jalili could bring in policies as hardline as the Taliban if elected, which Jalili acknowledged.
“Even before the election results were announced, we said 10 million or 9 million people are Taliban,” Jalili said in a recent debate, referring to criticism of his policies by reformists. “Does that help?”
Jalili has made no real comment about how he would tackle the ongoing controversy over the hijab in Iranian society. But those involved in Jalili’s campaign have been much more direct – calling for harsher punishments against those who refuse to wear the mandatory hijab. One man once described headless women as worse than “prostitutes.” Yet during his campaign, Jalili has shown ambiguity about how he would enforce the law and even posed for a selfie with a woman wearing a loose hijab, a moment captured in a news photo.
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Jalili is also supported by another hardline ayatollah, Mohammad Mehdi Mirbagheri, who is associated with the Front of Islamic Revolution Stability, a far-right group of hardliners in the country. The group, which supports Jalili, was behind a bill passed by Iran’s parliament that makes hijab violations punishable by up to 10 years in prison. It has not yet been approved by the country’s Guardian Council, a panel of clerics and jurists ultimately overseen by Khamenei.
“They want to put restrictions and barriers on everything, no matter what the area is,” political analyst Mehrdad Khadeir told The Associated Press. “The same applies when it comes to women, the internet or any other issue.”
