Statement on the U.S.-Iran Ceasefire Negotiations

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security welcomes the two week ceasefire agreed upon by the United States and Iran in negotiations that were mediated by Pakistan on 7 April 2026. The ceasefire arrived quickly after President Trump’s genocidal threat to destroy “a whole civilization” if Iran did not immediately open the Strait of Hormuz. While we do not know all the details of the pressures that led the U.S. President to choose a ceasefire over genocide, we applaud the people involved and urge them to do more of this. In particular, we applaud the immediate negative response of Americans to Trump’s threats, as well as their use of the word “genocide,” including some politicians and mainstream media outlets who tend to avoid the term at all costs. Restraining a leadership from committing genocide is one of the most important responsibilities that people and powerholders have towards our common humanity. Such influence was lacking in Israel after 7 October 2023, when a grieving Israeli public and its so-called foreign allies endorsed its clearly genocidal military plans for Gaza. We are relieved that stronger voices prevailed on the U.S. President to refrain from genocide last night.

Nevertheless, despite the good news, genocide remains an imminent threat from the United States so long as the current power arrangement between the U.S. and Israel is in force. The two countries are currently in a dangerous, self-radicalizing spiral of genocidal violence. They reinforce and radicalize one another’s genocidal tendencies, causing immense global devastation and suffering. The whole world must act to bring this relationship to an end. The Lemkin Institute believes the U.S. President’s threat of genocide is the logical consequence of the U.S. and Israel’s virtually unchecked power to commit mass atrocity. As long as impunity continues, these threats will be there.

Tuesday’s ceasefire deal was based on Iran’s 10-Point Plan, which will provide the basis for negotiations this weekend. In the original agreement, Iran agreed to re-open the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for a two-week cessation of bombing. Although Israel was not involved in (and may have been actively excluded from) these eleventh hour negotiations, it has said that it supports the ceasefire agreement. However, Israel seems intent on destroying it. On Wednesday morning, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu announced – apparently unilaterally – that Lebanon was not included in the ceasefire and then quickly unleashed a terrifying wave of synchronous airstrikes against densely populated neighborhoods that have so far killed 254 people and wounded more than 1,165. This massacre placed the ceasefire agreement in jeopardy only hours after it was reached. Both Iran and the Pakistani negotiators maintain that the ceasefire included Lebanon. Although President Trump later agreed with Israel that Lebanon was not included, there is no evidence that he was not simply covering for his ally’s defiance and criminal recklessness. Iran is wavering on its commitment to the ceasefire if Lebanon is not included. The Strait remains closed. The Lebanese president has announced that he does not want a ceasefire to come from the U.S.-Iran negotiations, but from direct negotiations with Israel, which the U.S. has offered to host next week.

The Lemkin Institute hopes that the U.S. President understands that for this ceasefire and subsequent negotiations to be successful, it is imperative that he clearly demonstrates that the United States can control Israel and end its strikes on Lebanon, even before direct negotiations between Israel and Lebanon begin. In showing he can control Israel, the President will also show that he is willing to exercise sovereignty in foreign policy and make good faith efforts to move away from the endorsement of Israel’s mass atrocity norm.

Although the Lemkin Institute is relieved by this ceasefire, that relief is qualified by the knowledge that this ceasefire is the result of an illegal, unprovoked war of aggression launched against Iran by the U.S. and Israel earlier this year, a fact that has gone virtually uncensured in the halls of power, especially in the West. For example, just under two weeks after the U.S. and Israel launched this war of choice, the UN Security Council, instead of standing up to the U.S. and Israel’s brazen violation of international law, adopted a resolution condemning the actions taken by Iran in response. Thirteen of the fifteen members of the Security Council voted in favor of the resolution. Two (Russia and China) abstained. 140 Member States co-sponsored the resolution, reflecting what Bahrain’s representative called the world’s “collective conscience.” The Lemkin Institute would like to see U.N. Member States develop a collective conscience against aggressive war and in favor of genocide prevention and human security. That is what we must all be working towards.

The message being sent by the United Nations is clear: international law only binds some countries. This reality will make these ceasefire negotiations very difficult. The Lemkin Institute rejects the notion that some states are above the law and hopes that the U.S. and Israel will one day be held to account for their decision to commit genocide and start an unnecessary war.

As explained in detail in our 6 March Red Flag Alert on the subject, aggressive war is a doorway to further mass atrocity. Powers that underake aggressive wars are very vulnerable to the commission of genocide. This fact has been lost to pundits who view the war in very narrow moral terms, using Iran’s autocratic and murderous regime to justify the U.S. and Israel’s illegal attacks, as if aggressive war can ever be logically recontextualized as humanitarian action. The lie of humanitarian aggressive war should have been exposed by the illegal U.S. war against Iraq in 2003, which was also branded as a humanitarian mission. Aggressive wars feed into genocidal tendencies within the regimes undertaking them and are often the result of preexisting genocidal projects. In the case of Iran, the aggressive war – and the violent militarism that has been promoted by President Trump’s “Department of War” since the war’s start – appear to have radicalized the U.S. state to the point that the President could make a clearly genocidal threat to a foreign country on social media.

It is because of the dangerous radicalizing energy of aggressive war that the Lemkin Institute believes it is imperative that international institutions like the U.N., Member States, and the international media begin speaking in transparent terms about what is happening in the world. Israel and the U.S., supported by multinational companies, international media empires, powerful billionaires, and, unfortunately, many multilateral institutions, are promoting frameworks that distort reality. In the context of the global collapse of institutional integrity, members of the Trump Administration, including President Trump himself, can make various ridiculous, baseless claims to attempt to manufacture legal justification for the war. None of these statements amount to anything more than blatant lies and disinformation. The world cannot allow President Trump to rewrite the narrative in this manner. Make no mistake, he and Prime Minister Netanyahu are the ones who created this threat to world peace. The Lemkin Institute calls on world leaders and the news media to speak with candor on this issue: the U.S. and Israel are the belligerent nations to this conflict. This ceasefire is only necessary because of their actions.

The degradation of humanity’s global institutions and of our Member States was powerfully evidenced on Tuesday, when the vast majority of world leaders were completely silent on Trump’s genocidal threat, despite the fact that prevention is, in fact, their legal obligation. It is probable that some world leaders attempted to reach President Trump privately to prevent him from taking the leap into total darkness. This is important. However, what is also needed is an immediate global response clearly condeming incitement to commit genocide. When one of the most powerful world leaders proclaims in no uncertain terms that he is going to commit genocide, nothing short of unequivocal condemnation should be the response. The Lemkin Institute is deeply alarmed at how close the world came to silently following President Trump off of this cliff on Tuesday night. When genocidal threats become normalized, no community or nation on the face of this planet is safe.

Given the state of the U.S. and world politics, this ceasefire, even if it holds, will not neutralize the threat of genocidal actions on the part of the U.S. or Israel against Iran. President Trump has now made it clear that he is willing and able to violate the Genocide Convention in order to get his way. We have already seen Israel do exactly that over the last two-and-a-half years in Gaza. Both the U.S. and Israel have been committing and threatening to commit war crimes and other serious breaches of international humanitarian law in Iran since they began this war of aggression in late February 2026. Both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have also made several threats to destroy Iranian infrastructure critical to the survival and well-being of its population. The Lemkin Institute is in no way convinced that the U.S. and Israel will abide by a ceasefire and will negotiate in good faith to achieve lasting peace. The world has already been witness several times over the last two years to Israel’s willingness to violate ceasefire agreements and to the U.S.’s willingness to negotiate in bad faith and attack during ongoing negotiations.

Therefore, despite the sigh of relief the world collectively breathed when the U.S. took the path of ceasefire rather than genocide, there are so many enablers of genocide in the U.S.-Israel relationship currently that the U.S. continues to pose a dire threat of genocide at home and abroad and will need to be closely monitored and contained. Long term, the U.S. will require a laser-focused genocide prevention strategy within all of its institutions to adequately address its growing genocidal nature. Changing parties in government will not suffice. Since at least 2023, the U.S. has been quickly developing into a genocidal state, where genocide is required for power to function. Under the Biden Administration, this development pivoted around Israel’s support for Azerbaijan’s genocide in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and Israel’s demand that the U.S. government ensure through unconstitutional laws the absolute loyalty of all Americans to its mass atrocities. Under President Trump’s second administration, whose ideological roadmap requires the genocide of several groups, both at home and abroad, including but not limited to immigrants of color in the U.S., trans people, and Palestinians, we have seen institutions weakened or dismantled that would protect the state from genocidal ideology and institutions empowered or created that would enable it. The result was Trump’s threat to annihilate Iran.

The U.S. has the largest military capacity of any nation worldwide. President Trump cannot be allowed to turn the U.S. into a full-scale genocidal state, as this will threaten the entirety of humanity. We cannot be sure, and may never know, what stopped President Trump in his tracks on Tuesday. Whatever happened to pull him back from the brink needs to continue to happen and to be strengthened, for the sake of all of humanity.