WHILE the world breathed a collective sigh of relief as the US-Iran ceasefire took hold on April 8, that sense of calm may prove fleeting.
The ceasefire is not conflict resolution. It carries a warning that in the absence of a sound legal architecture underpinning the talks, it risks becoming nothing more than an intermission between escalations.
The talks between the US and Iran must be anchored in international law as the central organising principle for a durable and lasting settlement.
Looking back at the debris of past truces, one thing is certain: ceasefires that lack a legal framework collapse under the weight of mistrust and competing narratives. Conversely, those grounded in established legal principles possess the capacity to stabilise even the most entrenched rivalries.
The starting point must be the United Nations Charter. Both Iran and the US have, at various points, justified their actions within the UN framework. The immediate task, therefore, is not to relitigate those claims in the abstract, but to subject them to a mutually agreed legal process anchored in international law.
Looking back, the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice offers guidance. In the famous 1986 case, Nicaragua vs United States, the court drew an important distinction between the gravest forms of the use of force and lesser violations. In other words, this case laid down the outlawed forms of the use of force by one country against another.
In another case, ‘Oil Platforms’ (‘Iran vs United States’, 2003), the court had to determine whether US claims of self-defence against Iranian targets were legally justified. The court determined the grounds legally insufficient. These cases are not mere academic relics. They provide a legal vocabulary through which both states can frame their legal positions.
The immediate priority is to convert the ceasefire into a legally binding framework.
Importantly, there is a prohibition under international law on states of knowingly allowing their territory to be used for acts contrary to the rights of other states. This principle was affirmed in cases such as ‘Corfu Channel’ (‘United Kingdom vs Albania’). Applied to the present context, it offers a pathway to address the attribution of actions by non-state actors. Rather than relying on unilateral assertions, the parties could agree to a verification mechanism grounded in this doctrine, whereby each state undertakes enforceable obligations to prevent hostile acts traceable to its territory or proxies. This is very important in the context of US-Iran relations.
However, legal principles are toothless without the right institutional machinery. For this, historical precedents provide ample practical models.
An example is the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. What made Camp David endure more than political will was an institutionalised legal framework that included phased withdrawals and third-party monitoring.
Similarly, the Algiers Accords of 1981 established the Iran-US Claims Tribunal, a binding arbitral mechanism that has handled thousands of claims and continues to resolve disputes between the two states decades later.
The takeaway is clear: even adversaries can sustain legal cooperation when it is properly institutionalised.
More recently, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, illustrates both the power and fragility of legally structured diplomacy. Its detailed verification regime delivered a degree of transparency. However, its subsequent breakdown exposed a critical gap: while the JCPOA contained a dispute resolution mechanism, it lacked a binding and adjudicatory framework strong enough to withstand political differences.
In my view, any future negotiations should also consider the Cold War era Helsinki Final Act. This model introduced early confidence-building measures such as prior notification and observation of military exercises. These measures reduced the risk of miscalculation albeit the underlying conflict was left unresolved. A similar regime between Iran and the US could transform the environment from one of opacity to transparency.
Another underutilised tool lies in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea — a multilateral international treaty. While neither the US nor Iran has ratified UNCLOS, they recognise certain provisions as customary international law. The regime of transit passage through international straits, including the Strait of Hormuz, imposes obligations on both coastal and user states. Embedding these rules into the negotiations through a bilateral or multilateral maritime code of conduct would directly address one of the most volatile theatres of confrontation.
In my view, any agreed framework should also incorporate a tiered dispute resolution mechanism. This could begin with bilateral consultations, escalate to mediation by neutral third-party countries (ideally under UN auspices), and culminate in binding arbitration. The experience of the Permanent Court of Arbitration demonstrates that even politically sensitive disputes can be adjudicated when parties consent to a structured process.
Critics will dismiss invoking international law by arguing that “law follows power.” They are not entirely wrong, but they miss the point. While international law is not without its limitations, it shapes the exercise of power by constraining excess and providing predictability.
The alternative — ad hoc arrangements untethered from legal norms — invites precisely the kind of instability that has defined US-Iran relations for decades.
The immediate priority, therefore, is to convert the ceasefire into a legally binding framework. This need not take the form of an elaborate international treaty. Even a framework agreement could establish mutual commitments on non-use of force, verification and monitoring mechanisms, protocols for incident prevention and communication and a binding dispute resolution pathway.
The real question is whether the US and Iran can reach a minimum understanding. They clearly can, as the existence of the ceasefire demonstrates. The harder question is whether they can embed that understanding in a legal foundation capable of surviving a sudden crisis, a new administration, or a single grave miscalculation.
While a ceasefire can temporarily stop the guns, it is only law that can prevent their return. What was at stake in Islamabad was whether the two adversaries could subject their rivalry to rules that outlast politics. If further talks drift without being anchored in law, they may not collapse overnight but instead wither away, piece by piece, until confrontation rears its ugly head.
The durability of this moment will therefore depend on whether international law is treated as the indispensable foundation in which the nascent talks between US and Iran are anchored.
The writer is an international lawyer and a graduate of Harvard Law School.
Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2026
