Saeed Jalili is a hard-line conservative who has never held public office but has long been seen as a favorite of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran's clerical establishment.
On June 28, Jalili finished second among four candidates vying to replace President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash in May.
Jalili garnered 38.6 percent of the vote in the extraordinary presidential election marked by record-low turnout. He will face reformist lawmaker Masud Pezeshkian, who received 42.5 percent of the vote, in a second-round run-off on July 5.
SEE ALSO: Reformer Pezeshkian, Hard-Liner Jalili Headed To A Runoff In Iran's Presidential ElectionJalili, 58, was a senior director in policy planning at the office of the supreme leader in the early 2000s, and currently serves as one of Khamenei’s two representatives on the powerful Supreme National Security Council.
He was secretary of that body from 2007 to 2013, when he also served as Iran's top nuclear negotiator under former President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Jalili was a deputy foreign minister from 2005 to 2007.
Jalili has run for president three times, including the current race.
In 2013, he was seen as a favorite of Khamenei's but finished third behind moderate Hassan Rohani and conservative Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. Rohani won the 2013 race, while former Tehran Mayor Qalibaf finished second.
In 2017, the ultraconservative Jalili ran for president before dropping out and endorsing Raisi, as did Qalibaf, before Rohani won his second term.
With Jalili and Qalibaf representing different voices within the fragmented conservative camp, pressure was building on the veteran politicians to come to an agreement for one of them to drop out in favor of the other ahead of the June 28 election.
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Why Iran's Presidential Election Matters More Than Past Votes
When neither Jalili nor Qalibaf bowed out of the race, the conservative vote was split, preventing either from getting the majority of votes needed for a first-round victory.
Jalili is a former member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' Basij paramilitary force who lost his leg in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.
His name came up as a possible candidate to be foreign minister after Raisi won the presidency in 2021. A staunch critic of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six major world powers, Jalili was critical of attempts to revive the accord when Washington unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018.
Jalili is known for having claimed he headed "shadow" governments that aided and advised the elected governments in power.
Jalili has also been accused by Qalibaf supporters of having ties to an Iranian activist who exposed a shopping spree abroad by the parliament speaker's family that led to calls for Qalibaf to resign from the post in 2022.