In an area home to some of the world's largest oil producers and key shipping routes, the uptick in tensions is likely to keep crude markets on edge.
"I think the issue we've got to determine, first of all, was it the Houthis directly," Angus Blair, professor of practice at the University of Cairo in Egypt, told CNBC on Tuesday. "Nothing would have happened without Tehran's consent or direct engagement."
Blair and others cite historical example to back up their suspicion. Iran has provided missiles and drones to the Houthis for several years, backing them as part of a broader proxy war with Saudi Arabia, which spearheaded an aerial assault on Yemen beginning in early 2015 after the rebel movement overran Yemen's Saudi-backed government.
The strike on Abu Dhabi, which hit a fuel storage facility of state oil company ADNOC, came amid renewed fighting in Yemen. UAE-backed Yemeni militia fighters recently forced the Houthis out of the oil-rich area of Shabwa and pushed back their advances in the key governorate of Marib, home to the bulk of Yemen's oil, without which the Houthis are unlikely to survive as a state.
Satellite photos obtained by the Associated Press on Tuesday showed the aftermath of a fatal attack on an oil facility in the capital of the United Arab Emirates claimed by Yemen's Houthi rebels. The images by Planet Labs PBC analyzed by the AP show smoke rising over an Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. fuel depot in the Mussafah neighborhood of Abu Dhabi on Monday Jan. 17, 2022.
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