Rafiki wrote:

White chick was a terrorist. Became one growing up in a rich family in Saudi Arabia. Her weiner husband was a peasant boy she grew up with in Saudi Arabia. She became a terrorist to rebel against her rich asshole parents who forbid her from being with a dirty peasant boy.

The white chick was laundering money for the Saudi prince's head of security who was working for Abu Nazir, and the CIA found out about her and her husband. So they ran off to a safe house, only it was rigged to kill them so they ran away from there. Then, presumably, people hired by Abu Nazir / that head of security guy tried to kill both of them.

They weren't really a red herring, they just got discovered by the CIA before they really did anything. Plot-wise, the white chick was the link for the CIA to find out Tom Walker was still alive. The bit about the rooftop sniper vantage point just turned out to be a mistake, since "marine 1" turned out to refer to Brody or Walker.