Iran has announced the end of its military operations against Israel. The unified command of the Iranian armed forces issued a statement on Monday describing hostilities as “halted†– while simultaneously warning of harsher attacks if Israel continues strikes on Lebanon. Yet even as both sides move towards what officials describe as a ceasefire, Tehran warned of harsher attacks if Israel continues strikes on Lebanon.
Earlier, on Truth Social, President Donald Trump called on both sides to immediately stop “shootingâ€. In a statement, the Iranian army's central command warned, however, of a “much more severe†response if Israel continued its attacks against Iran and southern Lebanon. So: is the US-Israel-Iran war over? It depends, mostly, on our understanding of what a ceasefire actually means.
“In that part of the world, a ceasefire is when you're shooting in a more moderate manner,†Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on 3 June. He was partially correct. While this definition of a ceasefire is not unique to the Middle East, it is – historically and legally – more or less what a ceasefire has always meant around the world.
There Is No Official Legal Definition of “Ceasefireâ€
International humanitarian law contains no universally accepted definitions of a ceasefire. The legal casebook of the International Committee of the Red Cross notes that the term was adopted “mainly by the press and politicians†after the Second World War, rather than arising from formal legal process, and that it has “caused some confusion†ever since.
The most widely used academic definition describes a ceasefire as a “suspension of acts of violence by military and paramilitary forcesâ€. A ceasefire, by that description, does not end a war. It merely pauses one. The 17th-century legal philosopher Hugo Grotius famously said that a ceasefire leaves the legal state of war “not dead, but sleeping.†If hostilities resumed, he argued, there was no need to re-declare war – because legally, it had never ended. When non-state actors are involved – as in Gaza, as in Lebanon – the legal architecture collapses further, into political pressure and good faith. The primary enforcement mechanism is trust. In active conflict zones, trust is not typically abundant.
During the Vietnam War, the Paris Peace Accords of 1973 were widely viewed as a diplomatic breakthrough that could finally end the conflict. Fighting resumed almost immediately. According to a history of the ICCS published by the Canadian Department of National Defence, there were at least 18,000 reported ceasefire violations in the first six months after the agreement took effect. The accords ultimately failed to secure a lasting peace, and the war continued until the fall of Saigon in 1975. The present is not so different. In the year following Israel's 2024 ceasefire with Hezbollah, UNIFIL documented more than 10,000 violations. The Government Media Office in Gaza said on 27 May that it had recorded 3,005 alleged violations of the ceasefire agreement over the preceding 227 days, which it said had resulted in 910 deaths.
