Sounds like typical Saudi surveillance of it's own population. Remember after 9/11 the Saudis went out the next day, rounded up a bunch of A-Q, and publicly executed them? The Saudis know exactly who everyone in the country is. They did the same thing with the ISIS fighters. They know which groups of Saudis are hardcore believers, so they recruited from those groups to go wreck havoc in Syria instead of rising up against the royal family.
This connection to China and West Africa is another piece of the bigger picture. The US doesn't need Saudi oil anymore. We're energy independent, and we haven't had a carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf ensuring safe oil transports for years. Europe's demand for Saudi oil dropped after the financial crisis a decade ago, plus they buy what they need from Russia now. That leaves Asia.
Asia is as dependent on oil as it ever was. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan would do business with the Saudis, while China would buy from both the Saudis and the Iranians, because fuck the US sanctions. With the US drawing down it's forces in the region, the Saudi-Iran tensions are building.
Fun fact about Saudi Arabia. It's largest oil field, which is the center of the country's infrastructure, has a large population of Shia muslims living over it. The Saudi majority is Sunni. They go together as well as Buckeye fans in Ann Arbor. The Iranians are all too well aware of this, and would love nothing more than to see a Shia insurrection in that area, effectively shutting down Saudi Arabia's oil exports.
So the Saudis are taking countermeasures. They are spying on the Shia population, keeping an eye on them with GPS being 1 tool they use. They also spy on the Chinese that direct the purchases of Iranian oil.
West Africa comes into play when you remember the British stopping the Iranian tanker in Gibraltar before it could reach Syria. Iran supplies it's allies in Syria with oil, because Saudi-backed ISIS took the Syrian oilfields to finance ISIS, and now the Americans are sitting on the oil fields. It would be quicker to ship the oil thru the Suez Canal, but the attack on their ship in the Red Sea was either the Saudis or Israelis , so Iran has to transport it all the way around Africa and thru the Mediterranean to Syria. Remember how Somalia was a center for piracy before the world cracked down and broke it up? Well, the pirates now operate off West Africa. My guess is the Saudis have financed them to re-locate to West Africa to harass Iranian oil shipments. If the pirates happen to make life more difficult for infidel Western shipping going thru the area and it can't be traced back to the Saudis, that's a bonus.
I mean, it woudl be like 9/11 and the recent saudi trainee mass shooting, but for Saudi!
I bet autits at pol would have a field day with that info... it would be the HWNDU flag hunt and the compound raid all rolled into one.
Sounds like typical Saudi surveillance of it's own population. Remember after 9/11 the Saudis went out the next day, rounded up a bunch of A-Q, and publicly executed them? The Saudis know exactly who everyone in the country is. They did the same thing with the ISIS fighters. They know which groups of Saudis are hardcore believers, so they recruited from those groups to go wreck havoc in Syria instead of rising up against the royal family.
This connection to China and West Africa is another piece of the bigger picture. The US doesn't need Saudi oil anymore. We're energy independent, and we haven't had a carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf ensuring safe oil transports for years. Europe's demand for Saudi oil dropped after the financial crisis a decade ago, plus they buy what they need from Russia now. That leaves Asia.
Asia is as dependent on oil as it ever was. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan would do business with the Saudis, while China would buy from both the Saudis and the Iranians, because fuck the US sanctions. With the US drawing down it's forces in the region, the Saudi-Iran tensions are building.
Fun fact about Saudi Arabia. It's largest oil field, which is the center of the country's infrastructure, has a large population of Shia muslims living over it. The Saudi majority is Sunni. They go together as well as Buckeye fans in Ann Arbor. The Iranians are all too well aware of this, and would love nothing more than to see a Shia insurrection in that area, effectively shutting down Saudi Arabia's oil exports.
So the Saudis are taking countermeasures. They are spying on the Shia population, keeping an eye on them with GPS being 1 tool they use. They also spy on the Chinese that direct the purchases of Iranian oil.
West Africa comes into play when you remember the British stopping the Iranian tanker in Gibraltar before it could reach Syria. Iran supplies it's allies in Syria with oil, because Saudi-backed ISIS took the Syrian oilfields to finance ISIS, and now the Americans are sitting on the oil fields. It would be quicker to ship the oil thru the Suez Canal, but the attack on their ship in the Red Sea was either the Saudis or Israelis , so Iran has to transport it all the way around Africa and thru the Mediterranean to Syria. Remember how Somalia was a center for piracy before the world cracked down and broke it up? Well, the pirates now operate off West Africa. My guess is the Saudis have financed them to re-locate to West Africa to harass Iranian oil shipments. If the pirates happen to make life more difficult for infidel Western shipping going thru the area and it can't be traced back to the Saudis, that's a bonus.