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.

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