IRAN has been accused of opening up a new front in its support for international mayhem in North Africa.

Ayatollah Khamenei’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps is now believed to be training and arming the Polisario Front, an anti-Western rebel movement in Morocco.

2 Ayatollah Khamenei is funding rebel movements around the world Credit: AFP

The Polisario have waged a four-decade war against the Moroccan government to fight for the independence of the Western Sahara region.

Tehran already faces bitter international condemnation for sewing mayhem by meddling in the conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.

News that its extremist military unit, the IRGC’s Quds Brigade, has spread its operations even further afield will alarm Downing Street.

The claim was made by a former Israeli ambassador to the UN.

2 The Polisario Front is a rebel movement fighting in Morocco Credit: Reuters

Dore Gold, who was also of PM Benjamin Netanhayu’s closest advisers, told The Sun: “I am told by reliable sources that the IRGC has now spread its tentacles into the Western Sahara conflict and is helping the Polisario.

“It’s doing this via its embassy in Algeria, using it as a base.”

Mr Gold added: “Iran believes it has to spread the Islamic revolution, and it’s been trying to do this ever since 1979.”

President Donald Trump named the Quds Brigade’s trouble-making across the Middle East as one of three reasons he was pulling the US out of the Iran nuclear deal earlier this month.

The deaths of dozens of British soldiers in southern Iraq has also been blamed on the secretive unit, who helped Shia rebels build devastating shape-charged IEDs.

Commons Foreign Affairs Committee chair Tom Tugendhat dubbed the new allegation as “concerning”.

Mr Tugendhat said: “The IRGC has been undermining allies of the United Kingdom for the best part of 30 years.

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“Rumours of Iran’s involvement in the affairs of more countries are concerning.”

The Polisario Front has been fighting to liberate the remote and sparsely populated Western Sahara region since 1973.

It has been occupied by Morocco since it stopped being a Spanish colony in 1975, which claims the desert areas as its own.