Iranians have seen it before: A youngish presidential candidate firing up crowds with fist-waving rants against the West, then displaying his Islamist bona fides with courtesy calls to hard-line clerics.
Saeed Jalili, familiar to outsiders because of his prominence as a nuclear negotiator, has tried to distance himself from outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has fallen out with the clerical leadership that controls Iran. But he is employing the same strategy that worked for Ahmadinejad eight years ago - and in the murky world of Iranian politics, where there are no credible polls and elections are a highly controlled affair, it has made him, for many, the presumed front-runner.
"No compromise! No submission!" shouted supporters at rallies this week that had men in front and women segregated in the back.
Perhaps more than any of the other seven candidates allowed to run by the clerics, Jalili presents a riddle: A negotiator who seems to dislike give-and-take; an opponent of international outreach who nonetheless noted in a 2006 interview that Iran's "big question" is whether it can ever restore relations with Washington.
The answer, judging by his statements ahead of the June 14 vote, may be: Not necessarily.
"I'm opposed to detente," he declared at one campaign stop. "The principle for us is to counter threats - not rapprochement. We have to implement the discourse of resistance in society."
In an attempt to showcase his piety, Jalili traveled to the seminary city of Qom, where he respectfully adjusted a microphone Wednesday for Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, once considered the spiritual mentor of Ahmadinejad. A day later, he told a women's gathering to shun Western ways and embrace motherhood as their "core identity."
Saeed Jalili, familiar to outsiders because of his prominence as a nuclear negotiator, has tried to distance himself from outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has fallen out with the clerical leadership that controls Iran. But he is employing the same strategy that worked for Ahmadinejad eight years ago - and in the murky world of Iranian politics, where there are no credible polls and elections are a highly controlled affair, it has made him, for many, the presumed front-runner.
"No compromise! No submission!" shouted supporters at rallies this week that had men in front and women segregated in the back.
Perhaps more than any of the other seven candidates allowed to run by the clerics, Jalili presents a riddle: A negotiator who seems to dislike give-and-take; an opponent of international outreach who nonetheless noted in a 2006 interview that Iran's "big question" is whether it can ever restore relations with Washington.
The answer, judging by his statements ahead of the June 14 vote, may be: Not necessarily.
"I'm opposed to detente," he declared at one campaign stop. "The principle for us is to counter threats - not rapprochement. We have to implement the discourse of resistance in society."
In an attempt to showcase his piety, Jalili traveled to the seminary city of Qom, where he respectfully adjusted a microphone Wednesday for Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, once considered the spiritual mentor of Ahmadinejad. A day later, he told a women's gathering to shun Western ways and embrace motherhood as their "core identity."
