Musaad bin Mohammed Al-Aiban

Background and Career

Musaad bin Mohammed Al-Aiban is Saudi Arabia's Minister of State, a member of the Council of Ministers and the kingdom's National Security Adviser; his year of birth is not given in public sources. His father, Mohammed bin Abdullah Al-Aiban, was the first head of the Saudi intelligence service. Al-Aiban earned a bachelor's degree in law at Harvard University and went on to a master's in law and a doctorate in international law there. He taught international law at King Saud University in Riyadh and chaired its law department, then became an adviser to the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources and to the Royal Court.

He has been Minister of State and a cabinet member since 1995, serving for more than a quarter of a century under Kings Fahd, Abdullah and Salman, traditionally without a specific portfolio and often as a trusted royal envoy. He has sat on the Council of Political and Security Affairs and the Council of Economic and Development Affairs since their creation on 29 January 2015, chaired the National Cybersecurity Authority since its founding in October 2017, and served as National Security Adviser since 27 December 2018.

The Beijing Talks and After

From 6 to 10 March 2023 Al-Aiban led the Saudi delegation in talks in Beijing with Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, and signed the trilateral China-Saudi Arabia-Iran statement under which the two countries agreed to restore diplomatic relations. In his closing speech he said the Saudi leadership's welcome for President Xi Jinping's initiative stemmed from the kingdom's consistent commitment since its founding to good-neighbourliness and to resolving disagreements through dialogue and diplomacy, and that the agreement's affirmation of state sovereignty and non-interference was a basic pillar of relations between states.

In February 2025 Al-Aiban and Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan took part in US-Russian talks held in Saudi Arabia, and on 11 March 2025 the two met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and a Ukrainian delegation in Jeddah.