TENSIONS continued to rise in the Middle East today as the United States sought to blame Iran for Yemen’s Houthi forces bombing a Saudi airport and military base.

Washington hawks led by National Security Adviser John Bolton are looking for an excuse to trigger a war against Iran. The US has recently mobilised the biggest military hardware mission to the region in decades.

The Yemeni attack, carried out by drone, came as Tehran announced that it had boosted its uranium-enrichment production, a year after the US pulled out of the international agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear activities.

President Hassan Rouhani said the increase was a response to the US waging “economic war” on Iran through its punitive sanctions regime. He recently warned that the impact of the sanctions could be worse than that of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

The authoritarian leader is seeking greater powers to bypass his country’s parliament on issues of national security and the economy, as did the wartime supreme council of the 1980s.

“Today, we need such powers,” he told Iran’s state news agency, adding that the country “is united that we should resist the US and the sanctions.”

The quadrupling of uranium production means Iran will soon breach the limits set by the nuclear deal. Tehran has warned that it will continue unless European countries renegotiate the terms of the agreement, giving a July 7 deadline.

Houthi forces were reported to have attempted a bomb attack on “civilian targets” in the Saudi town of Najran today, according to Saudi-led coalition spokesman Colonel Turki al-Maliki.

No details were made public, but US intelligence officials are believed to be based in the town supporting Saudi forces and US Green Berets. The Pentagon has refused to comment on this.