MONTREAL — Iran, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda are working closely together to step up jihadist attacks in the United States, Canada and the rest of the West, says former Central Intelligence Agency officer and counterterrorism expert Clare Lopez.

In fact, this collaboration has been going on 20 years, yet been largely ignored by the media and governments, she said in a lecture at Ruby Foo’s Hotel in Montreal.

Lopez is today a senior fellow at the Canadian conservative think-tank, the Arthur Meighen Institute for Public Affairs, named for the 1920s prime minister, which sponsored her appearance, with Act! for Canada.

She termed Hezbollah “a creature of Iran” that takes its orders directly from that regime. Hezbollah is the “A team” in the jihadist war, and Al Qaeda the “B team,” she said.

The goal of this axis, she said, is to defeat free societies and impose Islamic rule. It has cells all over North and South America that are financed by Iran, Lopez said.

In addition to its anti-West campaign, the axis singles out Jewish and Israeli targets for revenge, she said.

As serious as she believes the threat is, Lopez insisted that a military response should be only part of a comprehensive international counter-strategy, along with diplomatic, economic, political, legal, educational, social and even theological approaches.

“This is an ideological battle. It’s not just about killing their leaders, although that may be part of the military strategy. We will not win this war unless we understand the threat.”

Assassinating Islamist leaders deprives the West of valuable information that they might provide as captives, she said.

Successive U.S. administrations going back to Jimmy Carter have erred in believing that some “over-arching” agreement could be reached with Iran, she said.

“It will never happen… It’s against logic. Iran will never agree to give up [its quest for] nuclear weapons or to dismantle Hezbollah.”

The Obama administration’s strategy of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood as “good jihadis to use as a foil against the bad jihadis [Al Qaeda]” is similarly doomed to failure, she believes.

The Iran-led troika does not rely solely on violence. It is “insinuating sharia law into our societies by stealth,” as she put it.

“They are using Canadian values of multiculturalism and non-discrimination and your open, welcoming society to subvert Canadian laws.”

The jihadists are infiltrating educational institutions, the media and even law enforcement and security agencies, she said. Some mosques are being used as “command and control centres for battalions of jihad,” she contended.

Lopez claimed the Council on American-Islamic Relations, including its Canadian affiliate, which claims to speak for the Muslim community, are fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood, whom she also described as being as serious about jihad as Al Qaeda, although it has not used violence in the West.

Lopez said there should be stricter screening of prospective immigrants or student-visa applicants by Canada and the United States to ascertain whether they want to live here according to Canadian values.

“It’s not a matter of country of origin, but of the ideology, the worldview, of the individual… Why are they coming here? Is it to settle or colonize and infiltrate us?”

To complicate the situation for the West, Lopez said Al Qaeda is part of the opposition in Syria, the rebel side that is supported by the United States, while Iran and Hezbollah have backed President Bashar Assad.

It seems that when it comes to “intra-sectarian strife” within the Islamic movement the alliances shift, she said.

Lopez, who served with the CIA for 20 years, is also a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Center for Security Policy and the Clarion Fund, and a professor at the Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies.