The number of nuclear powers is set to grow with no limit, according to one Middle-East scholar.
The author of 31 books related to the Middle East and to his own Sephardic Jewish heritage, David Rabeeya addressed a student audience on the Iran-U.N. nuclear energy situation during a forum in Huntsman Hall last night.
Rabeeya, formerly a professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at Bryn Mawr College, said that a new type of arms race is emerging: the race for nuclear capability.
"Those countries that are nuclear powers, their number is getting larger and larger," he said.
Nuclear weapons capability is becoming increasingly available in the post-cold war period, he said.
"Iran feels that, strategically, they cannot have any serious dialogue with the U.S. without being in a position of power, which is to continue the research and one day build an atomic weapon," Rabeeya said.
Rabeeya dismissed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty -- which Iran signed and which attempts to prevent further spread of nuclear-weapon technology -- as irrelevant and said that the U.S.-led effort to block Iran has been politically motivated.
"The purpose of an agreement is to be broken," he said.
According to Rabeeya, potential United Nations sanctions on Iran's substantial oil exports would backfire because they would seriously disrupt the world economy.
Rabeeya said that Iran was influenced to pursue nuclear weapons in part by seeing its neighbors gain nuclear capabilities.
Israel, which Iran's president has threatened with destruction, is the lone nuclear power in the Middle East and has 200 atomic weapons, Rabeeya said. To the east, Iran's ally Pakistan is also nuclear-armed.
"Pakistan [has] what they used to call the first 'Muslim bomb,' and there are indications of strong academic and scientific connections between the Iranian and Pakistani elites," Rabeeya said, adding that their shared Shiite Muslim heritage is a strategic Iranian advantage.
Rabeeya, who was born in Baghdad, said that the U.S. invasion of Iraq will benefit Iran by creating a Shiite-led government in Iraq.
"The Shiites are asserting themselves demographically within the Arab-Muslim sphere," Rabeeya said. "We should take that into consideration to understand better the strategic concept of Iran right now."
