A joint initiative between the University of Bergen
and CMI – Chr. Michelsen Institute
Amid rising instability in the Middle East, are nuclear weapons a security concern?
Photo: KeithBinns Today, Israel is the only nuclear power in the region. Their rhetoric around nuclear weapons raises alarm bells across the world. Iran’s nuclear aspirations, combined with US and Russian strategic interests, further complicates the picture. What is the status of nuclear weapons in the Middle East? What are the prospects for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East?
Why is nuclear energy witnessing a resurgence in the region, with many actors investing in building nuclear powerplants? Some observers have expressed concern that nuclear energy can be used as a step towards the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. This lecture will provide a history and context of nuclear programmes in the Middle East, from the mid-1940s until today.
A light lunch will be served after the lecture.
The event is part of the series Who’s who in the Middle East. In this series, Pelle Valentin Olsen (UiB) invites researchers to help you navigate the many actors in the region.
They will explain the role of state and non-state actors and their ideologies. What are the interests of regional and global powers? What are the histories we have not been taught What histories and perspectives have simply been reduced to footnotes in international news coverage?
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Hebatalla Taha (PhD) is Associate Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Science and the Center for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University. Her research deals with intersections between political economy, technology, and war.
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Pelle Valentin Olsen is a cultural, social, and transnational historian of the modern Middle East. His research and teaching focus on the history of leisure, labor, gender, sexuality, popular culture, and cultural production.
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Hebatalla Taha (PhD) is Associate Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Science and the Center for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University. Her research deals with intersections between political economy, technology, and war.
Her work on nuclear politics in the Middle East has been published in International Affairs, Third World Quarterly, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, and Cambridge Review of International Affairs. Heba is also an Affiliated Researcher with Nuclear Knowledges at SciencesPo Paris.
Pelle Valentin Olsen is a cultural, social, and transnational historian of the modern Middle East. His research and teaching focus on the history of leisure, labor, gender, sexuality, popular culture, and cultural production.
He focusses specifically on Iraq, but his work simultaneously explores transregional and transnational connections, highlighting everyday perspectives and voices often left out by traditional political and state-centered histories.
He received his PhD with honors from the University of Chicago in 2020. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Roskilde University in Denmark, where he worked on the ‘Entangled Histories of Palestine and the Global New Left’ project.
Bergen Global is a joint initiative between the University of Bergen and Chr. Michelsen Institute that addresses global challenges.
