The United States-Iran peace Memorandum of Understanding, officially signed on 17 June with a final agreement currently being negotiated by the two parties in Switzerland, is a welcome step towards de-escalation after months of devastating conflict, which has brought immense suffering to civilians across the Middle East and heightened regional and international instability.
However, the agreement, together with the United States–led Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict as endorsed by the Security Council in November 2025, risks entrenching the conditions that have long fueled conflict, repression and insecurity across the region.
‘De-escalation and an end to this unjust war is urgently needed, but agreements that ignore the political and root causes of conflicts will be short-lived,’ warns Ziad Abdeltawab, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies director. ‘A durable peace requires the global community’s collaboration to address unlawful occupation, systematic attacks on civilians, impunity, and persistent denial of people’s rights to democratic governance, political participation, and equitable access to public resources across the region. Otherwise, this MoU will likely become yet another temporary ceasefire that can be broken whenever political interests change.’
Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian land, its ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians claiming the lives of 73,000 Palestinians and injuring over 173,000 others in Gaza since 2023, its continuous illegal annexation of the West Bank, its wars and territorial occupation in Lebanon and Syria, and forced displacement, remain central obstacles to any durable and sustainable peace.
A successful comprehensive regional settlement must also address Iran’s regional military expansionism and support for armed proxy groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. Any disarmament process of these groups should be undertaken exclusively by the lawful authorities of the sovereign state concerned under a strict UN monitoring mechanism, rather than imposed or carried out by external or regional powers. Such a process should be accompanied by measures enabling state institutions to protect all civilians effectively, uphold the rule of law, and exercise accountable and exclusive authority throughout their national territory.
This process should also attend to Turkey’s military presence and operations in neighboring territories, as well as the broader reliance by governments on foreign forces from the United States, Russia and Iran. Foreign military involvement has frequently undermined stability and rule of law, enabled abuses, and reduced incentives for accountable domestic governance.
To date, only the United Nations is legitimately positioned to address these interconnected issues comprehensively. World leaders should unite in pressing all state and non-state actors engaged in military or paramilitary operations in the Middle East to cease hostilities immediately and participate in a comprehensive, United Nations-led peace process.
Of utmost concern is the apparent lack of any significant commitment to accountability for serious breaches of international law committed during the conflicts that have plagued the region. Accountability must be applied universally and consistently to all parties responsible for grave abuses. Without justice for victims and accountability for perpetrators, any agreement risks entrenching the very impunity that has fueled successive cycles of violence across the region.
Lebanon has faced multiple waves of Israeli military attacks over the past three years. The escalation of hostilities on 2 March 2026 led to the displacement of more than 1.2 million people, with at least 3,783 people killed and 11,699 injured. In southern Lebanon, entire towns and villages have suffered widespread destruction of homes, schools, healthcare facilities, agricultural land and other critical civilian infrastructure. Likewise, the war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran has claimed the lives of nearly 2,000 civilians, including over 100 children killed in a U.S. strike on a school. At the same time, attacks by Iran on civilian infrastructures in the Gulf must be investigated as they constitute apparent war crimes.
Like the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, this recent war has demonstrated the futility of illegal military intervention as a pathway to stability or political change. Rather than weakening authoritarian rule in Iran, the war of aggression waged by the US and Israel against Iran appears to have consolidated the position of the authorities, enabling them to invoke wartime conditions to intensify repression at home. Iranian human rights organizations, the United Nations, and international rights groups have documented a surge in executions, arbitrary arrests, and politically motivated prosecutions since the outbreak of the conflict. The people of Iran should not be left out of the diplomatic equation and abandoned to the fierce repression at home.
The international community should therefore view the reported agreement not as the culmination of a peace process, but as an opportunity to begin addressing the deeper political realities that continue to generate conflict and human suffering across the region.
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