Zakani was a member of the Parliament of Iran from 2004 to 2016 and also from 2020 to 2021.
He announced ran for the presidency in 2013 and 2017 but was disqualified by Guardian Council both times. He was a candidate for the 2021 presidential election but withdrew in favor of Ebrahim Raeisi.
He was born on 3 March 1966 in the Khorasan Square neighborhood of Tehran and spent his childhood and adolescence in the same area.
His father, Haj Hossein Zakani, was a well-known athlete from Shahr Ray, a city in the southern part of the capital and one of the oldest in the world.
After the victory of the Islamic Revolution and during the imposed war, Zakani participated on the battlefield as a member of the Irregular Warfare Headquarters units led by Mostafa Chamran.
During the war, he held various responsibilities such as battalion deputy commander, head of intelligence and operations of Najaf Ashraf 3 camp, deputy head of intelligence and operations of the 27th Mohammad Rasulullah Division, and head of this division.
Zakani is a member of the academic staff at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences and has worked at the Nuclear Medicine Center of Imam Khomeini Hospital Complex and the Research Center for Nuclear Medicine at Dr. Shariati Hospital.
He is also a member of the board of directors of the Scientific Association of Nuclear Medicine of Iran.
Zakani registered his candidacy for the upcoming presidential election on June 1.
Iran will hold presidential elections on June 28, following the martyrdom of President Ebrahim Raeisi and his entourage in a helicopter crash in May.
The election’s winner will replace Ebrahim Raisi, who embraced martyrdom during a helicopter crash in Iran’s northwestern mountainous region on May 19.
MNA