The next confrontation between Washington and Tehran may not begin with a missile launch. It may begin with a disagreement over what international law actually requires. As the Islamabad Memorandum comes under mounting pressure and accusations replace verification, the ceasefire is exposing deeper questions about deterrence, legitimacy, and the future of regional security. Far beyond a dispute over compliance, the current crisis is becoming a test of whether international agreements can survive when political narratives move faster than independent verification.
Against this backdrop, GeoTrends spoke with Roxana Nicknami, Professor of European Studies at the University of Tehran, to examine the legal and strategic foundations of the latest escalation. From the limits of ceasefire diplomacy and the role of international law to deterrence, the Strait of Hormuz and the regional balance of power, she argues that the most consequential battle may no longer be fought on the battlefield, but over the interpretation of legitimacy itself.
– Washington has accused Tehran of violating the Islamabad Memorandum. From a legal perspective, how strong is that claim?
I think we have to start with the document itself, because the accusation only makes sense in light of what was actually signed.
The Islamabad Memorandum of 17 June 2026 was negotiated between heads of state, witnessed and formally attested by Pakistan’s Prime Minister, and established concrete, reciprocal obligations: an end to military operations, the phased lifting of the naval blockade, sanctions relief, and a timetable for troop withdrawals. Whether or not one chooses to classify it as a “treaty” in the strict sense of the Vienna Convention, an instrument of this nature engages the principle of pacta sunt servanda.
Under Article 60 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, a party cannot simply declare, by political fiat, that its obligations have lapsed. Suspension requires either mutual consent or a demonstrated material breach, and demonstrating such a breach requires neutral fact-finding rather than a unilateral assertion by the stronger party. That essential element is missing here.
The IAEA has had no verification access to Iranian sites since February 2026. Consequently, when Washington states that Iran “violated” the agreement, there is, quite literally, no independent body that has verified that claim.
– You argue that the issue extends beyond legal interpretation. What does this crisis reveal about the way asymmetric ceasefires actually function?
What we are seeing is less a story about Iranian bad faith than a structural problem inherent in asymmetric ceasefires. The stronger party tends, almost by default, to retain the practical power to define what compliance actually means.
It is worth remembering that Article 14 of the Memorandum anticipated precisely this vulnerability. It envisaged the agreement eventually being anchored in a binding UN Security Council resolution because a bilateral memorandum, on its own, remains hostage to the political priorities of whichever government happens to be in office.
I would also gently challenge the assumption that Iran was solely responsible for breaking the ceasefire. The unraveling can instead be traced to the dispute over commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. If one reads Article 4 carefully, Iran commits only to making its “best efforts” to ensure safe passage; it does not provide an unconditional guarantee. That kind of drafting ambiguity is exactly where agreements like this often begin to unravel, allowing both parties to invoke the same provision in support of entirely different interpretations of who violated the agreement first.
– President Trump has declared that the ceasefire is over. Are we heading toward a new escalation in the Gulf?
I think the risk of renewed escalation is real, but I would approach it from two strategic perspectives before turning to the legal one.
The first draws on what Robert Jervis famously described as the security dilemma. In the absence of reliable verification, defensive measures taken by either side — Iran rebuilding its missile posture or the United States redeploying naval assets — are easily interpreted by the other as preparations for offensive action. That dynamic does not require bad faith in either capital; once trust and verification collapse simultaneously, such misperceptions become almost structurally inevitable.
The second perspective comes from Thomas Schelling’s work on credible commitment in coercive bargaining. When President Trump declares that the ceasefire is over “in no uncertain terms,” he is attempting to project resolve in order to extract concessions. Yet such threats are persuasive only if they are backed by a demonstrated willingness to bear the costs of carrying them out. When rhetoric exceeds the actual appetite for renewed conflict, it tends to weaken the credibility of future commitments rather than reinforce the present one.
– Legally speaking, does the collapse of a ceasefire automatically release both sides from their obligations?
No. Even if the ceasefire has become increasingly fragile, that does not automatically deprive Iran of its rights under the Memorandum.
Under the general principles of treaty law, a partial or alleged breach does not release the other party from all of its obligations. Only a breach that is genuinely material — one that goes to the object and purpose of the agreement — can have that effect under Article 60 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
Viewed through that legal lens, Iran’s temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz is best understood as a proportionate and reversible countermeasure in response to what Tehran regarded as an earlier breach by Washington, rather than as an independent act of aggression.
So yes, I believe the risk of renewed escalation is real. However, I would locate the principal source of that risk in Washington’s abandonment of the negotiated track rather than in any renewed Iranian commitment to revisionist behaviour.
– Looking at both the 14-point framework and the final agreement, Iranian officials have described the outcome of the war as a strategic victory. Which provisions of the agreement best support that claim?
To appreciate the broader picture, you have to read several provisions together.
Article 2, which commits both parties to respecting each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and refraining from interference in internal affairs, is, in my view, the single most consequential provision. In practical terms, it amounts to a written American renunciation of regime change as a war aim. That is significant because neither U.S. nor, certainly, Israeli officials were willing throughout the conflict to explicitly rule that objective out.
Equally important are the provisions requiring U.S. forces to withdraw from the vicinity of the Islamic Republic of Iran within thirty days of a final agreement, the phased lifting of the naval blockade, the commitment to a reconstruction package worth approximately $300 billion, and the termination of sanctions.
Taken together, these provisions bear the hallmarks of what conflict scholars would describe as a negotiated settlement rather than an unconditional surrender.
– Why do you believe these provisions amount to a strategic victory rather than simply a negotiated compromise?
History provides an important benchmark. When a materially stronger power concludes a war pursued with maximalist objectives—not by dictating terms, but by co-signing a reciprocal agreement that includes financial, political and security commitments towards the weaker party — it usually suggests that the costs of continuing the conflict had come to outweigh the expected gains. That is not an act of generosity; it is a strategic recalibration.
From a Waltzian structural-realist perspective, the crucial point is that Iran, despite the clear asymmetry in conventional military power, retained sufficient retaliatory capability — its ballistic missile arsenal, the strike on Al Udeid, and a credible ability to threaten shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — to bring Washington to the negotiating table and secure a written, reciprocal agreement.
To me, that is the clearest empirical demonstration that deterrence achieved its strategic purpose. It is also the substantive basis on which Tehran characterises the outcome as a strategic victory rather than merely a rhetorical claim.
– Washington insists that its objective was not regime change but rather degrading Iran’s military and nuclear capabilities. If that was indeed the case, on what basis can Tehran still claim a strategic victory?
I think the question rests on two assumptions that are worth separating.
The first is that a state’s declared objective is necessarily the same as its operative objective. Yet the literature on war termination consistently distinguishes between the two. Israeli officials, in particular, repeatedly referred — sometimes publicly, more often in background briefings — to state collapse rather than merely degrading Iran’s military capabilities.
When a war that begins with maximalist ambitions ends with a signed agreement centred on sovereignty and non-interference, the narrowing of the stated objective appears less like the original strategy and more like a retrospective adjustment to what ultimately proved achievable.
The second assumption is that victory must be measured on the aggressor’s terms. Waltz’s conception of survival as the primary currency of an anarchic international system is particularly relevant here. For a state facing an adversary whose declared or implied objective was regime destruction, the decisive benchmark is not battlefield attrition but whether sovereign decision-making and core state institutions survived intact.
In Iran’s case, they did. The succession of leadership followed the country’s own constitutional procedures rather than an externally engineered collapse. The government continued to function and, crucially, negotiated as a sovereign counterpart capable of securing binding commitments from the other side.
Realist scholars generally regard that combination of institutional continuity and reciprocal, enforceable gains as the hallmark of successful deterrence under severe pressure, even when the material costs of the conflict are exceptionally high.
– From a legal perspective, is “victory” even a meaningful concept in international law?
Not really. International law does not provide an independent legal test for victory. It does, however, provide standards for assessing lawfulness.
A state that resists what it considers an unlawful use of force under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, invokes its right of self-defence under Article 51, and ultimately becomes a co-signatory to a reciprocal agreement rather than a party to an act of capitulation occupies a legally defensible position, regardless of how the outcome is described in the language of conventional military victory.
From a legal standpoint, the relevant question is therefore not who can claim “victory” in political or military terms, but whether the conduct of the parties remained consistent with the applicable rules of international law. In my view, that is the more meaningful yardstick in assessing the outcome of this conflict.
– Both Washington and Tel Aviv argued that Iran was moving closer to a nuclear weapons capability. In your view, had Iran reached the technical threshold required to build a nuclear weapon, had a political decision been made?
I would approach that question with some caution, because it tends to conflate three distinct dimensions — political, technical and legal — that should be analysed separately. Collapsing them is very much what Ole Wæver and the Copenhagen School describe as securitisation: transforming a technically ambiguous situation into an existential threat in order to make an extraordinary response — in this case, preventive war — appear self-evidently justified.
Politically, Iran has remained a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) throughout and continues to be bound by a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA. Moreover, Iran’s Supreme Leader has maintained a standing religious edict prohibiting the acquisition of nuclear weapons — a commitment Tehran has repeatedly invoked during negotiations. Whether one accepts that position or not, intent remains a relevant consideration in international law when distinguishing between a civilian nuclear programme and a weapons programme.
Technically, the IAEA’s last verified figures — which predate the June 2025 strikes, after which the Agency lost verification access — placed Iran’s stockpile at approximately 440.9 kilograms enriched to 60 percent. That is unquestionably much closer to weapons-grade enrichment than to the levels required for a civilian fuel cycle, and there is little value in pretending otherwise.
However, it still falls short of the 90 percent enrichment generally associated with weapons-grade uranium. Moreover, both the IAEA’s assessments and reports by the U.S. Congressional Research Service have highlighted the absence of any demonstrated weapon design, a workable detonation system, and the specialised metallurgical expertise required to cast and machine weapons-grade uranium into a deliverable weapon — an entirely separate and technically demanding stage that goes well beyond enrichment itself.
It is also worth recalling that both U.S. and Iranian officials stated in early 2026 that uranium enrichment had not resumed. Whatever uncertainty exists today stems primarily from the loss of IAEA verification following the strikes — a situation created by the strikes themselves — rather than from independently verified evidence of prior concealment.
– Even if Iran had moved closer to a technical threshold, would that, in itself, have provided a lawful basis for the use of force?
In my view, no. Even assuming, purely for the sake of argument, that Iran had moved closer to a nuclear weapons capability, that fact alone would not constitute a sufficient legal basis for the use of force.
Article 51 of the UN Charter requires an actual armed attack to justify self-defence. Even the broader doctrine of anticipatory self-defence against an imminent threat remains constrained by the Caroline standard, which requires a necessity that is “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.”
Latent technical capability, in the absence of a demonstrated political decision to weaponise and an imminent armed attack, simply does not satisfy that threshold.
In my reading, what occurred is therefore better understood as an instance of preventive war, rather than pre-emptive self-defence — a distinction that remains fundamental in international law. The overwhelming majority of legal scholarship, together with the general direction of the International Court of Justice’s jurisprudence, regards preventive war as incompatible with Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.
– During the conflict, the United States deployed enormous military assets across the region but ultimately accepted a ceasefire. Was that a sign of American weakness, or simply a recognition that further escalation was no longer worth the cost?
I would actually resist that dichotomy, because I do not think the two explanations are mutually exclusive.
There is a long tradition in deterrence theory, from Thomas Schelling to Robert Jervis, demonstrating that overwhelming force projection does not automatically translate into what strategists call escalation dominance, particularly against an adversary that retains meaningful asymmetric capabilities: a substantial ballistic missile arsenal, regional proxy networks, and, perhaps most importantly in this case, a credible ability to threaten a maritime chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s seaborne oil trade passes.
There is also a substantial body of empirical research supporting this argument. Robert Pape’s work on air power remains one of the most frequently cited references, showing that coercive bombing campaigns rarely produce the political capitulation their architects anticipate, especially when directed against states whose political systems are capable of absorbing sustained costs. The same pattern can be observed across very different historical cases, from Vietnam to NATO’s air campaign against Serbia in 1999.
Add to that the wider economic consequences — surging oil prices, financial market disruption, mounting pressure on regional allies — as well as domestic political constraints in Washington, including war fatigue after two decades of military engagement in the Middle East and growing pressure from Congress, and a much clearer picture emerges of why continued escalation no longer appeared strategically worthwhile.
I would therefore describe the decision as a rational recalibration of the cost-benefit equation. At the same time, that recalibration was itself a direct consequence of Iran’s ability to endure sustained military pressure. Without that resilience, Washington would have had far less reason to revise its strategic calculations.
Whether one chooses to describe that outcome as weakness or prudence is ultimately a matter of political framing rather than analytical judgment. The underlying empirical reality remains the same: Iranian deterrence achieved its strategic purpose.
– Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar avoided openly siding with Tehran during the conflict. Does that suggest that Iran will emerge from the war more isolated in the Gulf?
Some degree of recalibration is probably inevitable, but I would resist the binary framing of the question.
For several years now, the Gulf states have pursued a strategy of soft balancing and strategic hedging. The China-brokered rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023 long predates this conflict and reflects a broader regional shift towards what English School scholars describe as a regional “society of states” grounded in pragmatic coexistence rather than rigid bloc politics.
Their reluctance to openly align with either Washington or Tehran during the conflict should therefore be understood as evidence that this strategy remains intact, rather than as evidence that they have quietly chosen to align against Iran.
– Even so, Iran temporarily closed the Strait of Hormuz and exerted pressure on regional shipping. Doesn’t that risk damaging its long-term relations with the Gulf states?
There is an important point that is often overlooked in Western commentary. Throughout the conflict, these states hosted the air and naval infrastructure, logistical support and overflight access from which military operations against Iran were either launched or sustained.
Viewed in that context, Iran’s actions in the Strait of Hormuz are, in my view, better understood as countermeasures directed at the economic infrastructure supporting the war effort rather than as a strategic attempt to sever relations with its Gulf neighbours.
Under the law governing countermeasures, when the infrastructure of a third state is used to project force against another state, the injured state retains a degree of latitude to adopt proportionate and reversible economic measures connected to that infrastructure.
It is also worth noting that Iran confined its response to a temporary closure of the Strait rather than a permanent one, and to economic pressure rather than direct military action against those states. At the very least, that suggests the principle of proportionality was being taken seriously.
Looking ahead, rebuilding trust will require practical confidence-building measures rather than political reassurances alone. Military hotlines, regular maritime security dialogues and reciprocal transparency regarding the presence of foreign military forces on each other’s territory would all contribute to reducing future risks. Tehran has consistently expressed support for this type of regional security architecture, including through the Hormuz Peace Endeavour proposals it advanced before the war.
– Looking ahead, what would a durable framework for preventing future military escalation actually require?
First, the agreement needs to be legally anchored, essentially along the lines already envisaged in Article 14 of the Islamabad Memorandum. That means transforming the bilateral memorandum into a binding UN Security Council resolution under Chapter VII, modelled on Resolution 2231 (2015), which endorsed the JCPOA. This is far more than a symbolic step. Legally, it removes enforcement from the discretion of any single government and gives the other members of the Security Council — including the permanent members — a recognised role in holding any future violator accountable.
Second, mutual verification must be restored through full IAEA access to Iranian nuclear facilities, alongside the implementation of the sanctions relief and reconstruction commitments already contained in the agreement. From a theoretical perspective, verification is the principal mechanism for mitigating what Robert Jervis described as the security dilemma, because strategic misperception is often driven less by hostile intent than by informational uncertainty.
Third, the region needs a permanent security architecture: an institutionalised dialogue between Iran and the Gulf Arab states, supported by the relevant external powers. Such a framework could draw on the confidence- and security-building measures developed under the Helsinki Process and later institutionalised through the OSCE, including advance notification of military exercises, emergency communication channels, and permanent mechanisms for resolving maritime incidents before they escalate.
Fourth, and this is a point that I believe remains systematically underappreciated in much Western analysis, no durable regional non-proliferation architecture can ultimately succeed without addressing Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal — the only nuclear arsenal in the region that remains outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and beyond the scope of IAEA safeguards.
As Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye argued, cooperative regimes endure only when their rules are applied symmetrically rather than selectively. An international order built on visible exceptions and double standards carries within it the seeds of its own future instability.