Iran’s Supreme Ayatollah has ordered the feared Revolutionary Guards to escalate its worldwide terror to punish the West for backing the war against Assad, The London Telegraph reported Wednesday.

The report based on Western intelligence sources, said that Ayatollah Ali Khameini issued the order to the elite Al Quds Force unit after discussion of a special report on the consequences if Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime falls.

Assad is a key ally for Iran, which has been isolated not only by Western leaders but also by much of the Muslim world. The doubtful future of Assad’s regime is one of the major factors in Iran’s reaching out to Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi to renew ties with Iran after more than a three-decade freeze.

Assad has been an important link for the Iran-Hizbullah alliance and has smuggled tens of thousands of missiles, and possibly chemical weapons, into Hizbullah-dominated areas of Lebanon.

Under the threat of crippling economic sanctions and the fall of Assad, Khameini knows that without Syria, he has no direct link to Hizbullah via the Syrian-Lebanese border. Iraq separates Iran from Syria, which borders both Israel and Lebanon.

Iranian officials reported to Khameini that Iran must warn “America, the Zionists, Britain, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others that they cannot act with impunity in Syria and elsewhere in the region,” the Telegraph reported.

he responded by ordering the Al Quds commander, Qassem Suleimani, to escalate attacks on Western and Israeli targets throughout the world.

Several terrorist attacks the past year have been attributed to Iran, dating from the suicide bombing of a bus with tourists in Bulgaria this summer to last year’s failed assassination attempt on the Saudi Arabia ambassador to Washington.

In between, Iran has been fingered for attacks and attempted attacks on Israelis in Thailand, India and Azerbaijan.

Most if not all of the attacks were order by the Al Quds Unit 400, a senior Western intelligence official told the London newspaper.

The Iranian regime now seems determined to retaliate for what they regard as the West’s attempts to influence the outcome of the Syrian unrest,” he was quoted as saying.

Syrian rebels recently captured 48 Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers who were operating in Syria on behalf of Assad.