The young Saudi crown prince behind a sweep of corruption-related arrests over the weekend is known for his tough-guy image, his promises to deliver reforms to a conservative nation and his closeness to the Trump administration.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 32, is a Saudi-educated son of the current King Salman, and was named in June in a surprise move to be heir to the throne, replacing his older cousin, Mohammed bin Nayef, 57.

President Trump congratulated Prince Mohammed within hours of that appointment, having met him in March at the White House. The two men share a preference for confronting Iran, especially in Yemen. And Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, who hopes to enlist Saudi Arabia's help on Israeli-Palestinian peace, has dined with the prince this year both in Washington and in Riyadh.

The latest action came as Prince Mohammed was named head of a new anti-corruption committee established Saturday, just hours before the committee arrested 11 Saudi princes and 38 other top officials in the largest sweep of its kind in years. The move disables opposition to the crown prince’s policies from once-untouchable members of the royal family.

Among those taken into custody were billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the world’s richest men with extensive holdings in Western companies, including Twitter, Apple, Citigroup, and the Four Seasons hotel chain. Also arrested were two of the late King Abdullah’s sons.

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Prince Mohammed last month pledged to counter extremism and bring Saudi Arabia back to “moderate Islam.”

“We are returning to what we were before, a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world,” he told investors in Riyadh on Oct. 24, while announcing of a modernization plan that included a $380 billion economic development zone. "We will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with destructive ideas. We will destroy them today. We will end extremism very soon."

U.S. intelligence agencies have long pointed at wealthy Saudis as financial backers of extremist groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, 15 were Saudi. And the Saudi government has backed a fundamentalist form of Islam known as Wahabbism, which was spread around the world through Saudi-funded mosques and religious leaders, many preaching intolerance and other extreme views.

U.S. leaders have also praised Saudi Arabia’s government for its efforts to counter terrorism. The White House said Trump spoke with King Salman on Saturday and "they emphasized the importance of countering extremist ideologies and championing moderation and tolerance."

Oil-rich Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest sites and ruled as a monarchy under Islamic sharia law, remains among the most conservative in the world. In September, Saudi officials announced they would begin allowing women to drive in June 2018, in an effort to counter poor perceptions and to boost the economy.

That is among several recent developments attributed to Prince Mohammed, who took the reins with a mandate for aggressive change, according to analyst Simon Henderson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“This is the young man who is already the main contact between his country and the Trump White House, as well as the architect of the deadlocked war in Yemen, (and) the Saudi lead in regaining two Red Sea islands from Egypt,” Henderson wrote in a June profile of the crown prince. “He is said to be obsessed with the danger posed by Iran and favorable, one day, to open relations with Israel.”

Henderson described “a widely believed anecdote” he heard from one of Prince Mohammed's cousins. According to the story, Prince Mohammed sought a judge’s approval for a business deal. When the judge refused, the prince pulled out a bullet from his pocket and told the judge to sign, which he did. When then-King Abdullah heard about the incident, he banned the future crown prince from his court for several months, Henderson said.

Prince Mohammed's appointment as crown prince came with a series of other young princes named to high posts in the kingdom, suggesting “a complete generational makeover of a system previously dominated by royals marked by age and experience,” Henderson said.

Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. peace negotiator who advised Democratic and Republican presidents on the Middle East, has called the young prince impulsive and dangerous.

In the two years before he was appointed crown prince, he served as defense minister and presided over the war in Yemen, which is stalemated and led to thousands of deaths, a major rift with neighboring Qatar and growing tensions with Iran.

Prince Mohammed “has driven the Kingdom into a series of royal blunders,” Miller wrote in June's Politico Magazine. “Far from demonstrating judgment and experience, he’s proven to be reckless and impulsive, with little sense of how to link tactics and strategy.”

“Sadly, he’s managed to implicate and drag the new Trump administration into some of these misadventures, too,” Miller said