Yemeni strikes postpone the Six Kings tournament and paralyze sporting activities in the Kingdom

Reuters news agency reported that organizers of the Kings Six tennis tournament have announced the postponement of the event, which was scheduled to take place this October, with a new date set for December 27-30.

The organizers of the tournament attributed this postponement to what they called major security concerns following the qualitative operations of the Yemeni armed forces deep inside the Kingdom, and after the closure of Riyadh airport to air travel.

The agency explained that the event attracts the world’s top tennis players, with participants receiving substantial cash prizes, noting that the armed forces’ operations have disrupted sporting activities in the Kingdom, as the Asian Golf Tour announced that it is monitoring the security situation before the start of the Saudi International in Riyadh next month.

Saudi Arabia is preparing to host the Asian Cup for the first time in 2027, an important test before it hosts the 2034 World Cup. The Kingdom is also hosting the FIFA Esports World Championship in Jeddah from October 16 to 25. However, the Japan Football Association said it will not participate after a comprehensive assessment of the current situation in the host country and the available information regarding safety and security. The Australian Football Federation also confirmed that its security team is monitoring the situation.

In the same vein, The Guardian newspaper confirmed in a report yesterday that the Gulf region has officially entered a new and prolonged phase of political and security instability, a phase it described as irreversible and whose strategic impact surpasses anything the region has previously witnessed. In a detailed analytical column by writer Nesrine Malik, the newspaper explained that the belief held by the region’s leaders that relying on old alliances or the traditional security umbrella (the American and Western umbrella) is no longer a viable option in light of the rapid changes and recent events in the region.

The analysis considered the Yemeni strikes deep inside Saudi Arabia to be an unusual turning point in the regional conflict since the start of the war and the American-Israeli aggression against Iran last February, noting that the unusual scale of losses inside Saudi Arabia would provoke escalating military responses, as tensions reached their peak following the escalation of Saudi enemy raids and the bombing of Sana’a airport to prevent an Iranian plane from landing, which led to a broad military response by Sana’a.

The article explained that this deterioration was not a sudden occurrence, but rather the culmination of a gradual and continuous erosion of the concept of security and peace in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, an erosion that has changed the features of the region to a degree that exceeds what its leaders wish to admit.

The article’s author recalled that this series of events began more than a year ago, when Iran launched missiles at an airbase hosting US forces in Qatar in response to US strikes on its nuclear facilities, followed by Israeli strikes targeting Doha in which Palestinians were killed, thus breaking a long-standing standard that assumed the sanctity of the lives and sovereignty of the Gulf residents as a cost of security alliances with Washington.

She added that the war waged by the Trump administration and the war criminal Netanyahu against Iran has completely drawn the Gulf states into the conflict. Tehran responded with attacks targeting American interests in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman, targeting military sites, energy facilities, desalination plants, and vital economic infrastructure linked to the United States. These attacks paralyzed normal life, closed schools for months, and disrupted airport and air traffic. They also hindered these countries’ plans to integrate into the international community as global destinations for tourism, trade, sports, and entertainment, as billions of dollars in investments in Formula 1 championships, golf tournaments, and boxing were directly threatened by the airstrikes.

On the Yemeni front, the writer indicated that the Yemeni armed forces benefited from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which led to an increase in commercial shipping traffic adjacent to the Yemeni coast, in order to liberate the western Yemeni coast and control vital lands that ensure supervision and control over the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea in its entirety.

The writer quoted a senior official in Sana’a as saying that the attacks on Riyadh came to make the world realize that civilian infrastructure in Yemen was and still is targeted by the Saudi enemy and its coalition, and that the Yemeni response represents a proportionate response, in light of the Saudi regime’s persistent disregard for the value of Y