Seyed Mohammad Marandi was born on 14 May 1966 in Richmond, Virginia, United States. His father was a medical student at the University of Tehran. In 1965 he was arrested for criticizing the Pahlavi regime and spent six months in prison. In 1966, facing another arrest, he fled the country. He ended up in the United States, where he continued his medical studies. His mother was eight months pregnant at the time. He was born on May 14, 1966, just four weeks after we arrived in Richmond, Virginia. He has two younger sisters, both born in the U.S.
After the Islamic revolution of 1979, the Marandi family returned to Iran. One year after the revolution, on September 22, 1980, Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, invaded Iran with the support of Western nations. At the age of sixteen Mohammad Marandi joined the revolutionary army as a volunteer to fight the invaders. He survived two chemical attacks. The war ended in 1988. Marandi enrolled at the University of Tehran to study English literature. He did his BA and MA at the University of Tehran. He did his PhD at the University of Birmingham. His thesis examined Orientalism and the Romantic age, with particular reference to Lord Byron. I looked at how Byron and other Romantic writers engaged with Orientalism, as well as how contemporary critics viewed Romanticism. He returned in 2003 to Iran, where he became an assistant professor at the University of Tehran, then an associate professor and eventually a full professor.
Marandi has become an international media commentator on Iran and geopolitics. He has appeared on international news networks such as Channel 4, Sky News,PBS, ABC, CGTN, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and RT. He has also contributed opinion pieces to publications such as Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, and Tehran Times.
His webpage at the University of Tehran is https://profile.ut.ac.ir/en/~mmarandi.