Ran was born in 1955 in Nir Hen, in the Negev. He was raised in a secular family in the Israeli coastal settlement of Nahsholim until his late teens, when his family, mother and brother (who later joined the Israeli security service, the Shin Beit) left the kibbutz. Inducted into the IDF, where he became a commander in an armoured division. In 1995 Ran also served in an elite operations unit, the Sayeret Matkal. He worked in a shoe factory in Tel Aviv, and became strictly orthodox, together with his wife Sharona, who came from the moshav Neve Yarak. The couple has ten children.