Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani

Zayani was born on 15 April 1954 in Muharraq, Kingdom of Bahrain.[1] He graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the United Kingdom.[4] He is also a graduate of the aeronautical engineering program, Perth Scotland (1978).[1] He received a master's degree in logistics management from the Air Force Institute of Technology in Dayton, Ohio, in 1980.[4] He also received a PhD in operations research from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California in 1986.[4] He attended command and general staff courses in Fort Leavenworth Kansas in 1988 and received the sword of honor along with the title of Master Logistician from the US Army.[4] Later, he attended leaders in development program at Harvard University in 2008.[5]

Zayani had work experience in Bahraini defence forces, in ministerial posts as well as in university. He became a commissioned officer in the Bahrain Defence Force in 1973.[6] His career at the Bahraini defence forces ended on 2 June 2004. Then he began to serve as the chief of public security as a major general at interior ministry in 2004.[7] He promoted to the rank of lieutenant general in 2010.[5] Next, he was appointed adviser to the minister of foreign affairs in the rank of minister on 10 June 2010.[4][8] He also worked as a lecturer at Arabian Gulf University, and as mathematics and statistics professor at the University of Maryland in Bahrain, and as a quantitative methods professor at the University of Bahrain.[1]

On 1 April 2011, Zayani was appointed secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council.[6] Initially, Bahrain nominated another candidate, Mohammed bin Ibrahim Al Mutawa, for the post.[9][10] However, due to Qatar's strong objection to him, Zayani was later nominated by Bahrain for the post in May 2010.[11][12] Zayani replaced Abdul Rahman bin Hamad Al Attiyah in the post.[13] His term is due ended on 31 March 2020.

On 15 September 2020, Zayani signed the official Bahrain–Israel normalization agreement in a signing ceremony at the White House in Washington, D.C.[14]