THE Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People’s Rights (Codir) cautiously but relievedly welcomes the announcement on Tuesday night of a “conditional ceasefire” and two-week cessation of the illegal war being waged on Iran by the criminal and murderous US-Israeli axis.

Codir has consistently maintained a position of steadfast opposition to war on Iran and has been calling for a ceasefire since the onslaught began with surprise attacks on the country on the morning of February 28, while Iran was still at the table negotiating in good faith.

Since the beginning of this criminal war of choice, the US and Israel have continually, systematically, and brazenly violated the core tenets of the UN Charter and international law through the cowardly attacking of civilian targets and infrastructure throughout Iran.

Thus, we have borne witness to the wanton laying to waste of vast swathes of Iran’s economic, industrial, and civic infrastructure in wave after wave of attacks unleashed from the skies. It is beyond doubt that the Iranian nation and people will take a long time to recover from this devastation.

The killing and wounding of tens of thousands of Iranian civilians, mercilessly subjected day and night to incessant inhumane bombardments; the destruction of tens of thousands of residential units; the imposed demolition of production plants, strategic industries, innocent people’s workplaces, universities, as well as educational and medical centres; as well as the destruction of hundreds of historical, including Unesco-listed, sites; and the infliction of serious damage upon the country’s highways, bridges, and railways, all amount to a disaster for Iran and its people and one played out before the world’s media and international attention.

Rectifying this disaster will require a durable and sustainable peace, proper reparations to allow Iran to rebuild, as well as the implementation by its own government of urgently needed reform as well as popular policies aligned with the nation’s real strategic interests.

However, it is important to state that all reports from on the ground in Iran indicate that the 40-day bombardment of Iranian cities, as well as civil and national infrastructure by the US and Israel has neither weakened the resolve of the Iranian people one iota to resist malign outside interference nor to rally to the defence of Iran’s national sovereignty.

The formation of huge human chains across bridges and around power plants at the eleventh hour before the anticipated coming into effect of Trump’s threat that “a whole [Iranian] civilisation would die [that night], never to be brought back again” in a stand against their bombardment and destruction by the US and Israeli war machines, was testament to the sheer courage and steadfastness of the Iranian people in the face of unimaginable peril.

The US president’s subsequent announcement of his acceptance of the general framework of Iran’s 10-point proposal as a basis for negotiations, could well provide the pathway for Iran to demand the total removal of the entirety of the crippling regime of economic and banking sanctions inflicted upon the country over the past two decades, which have devastated the livelihoods and lives of ordinary Iranian people and families first and foremost as well as ruin any possibility for Iran to develop as it otherwise could have.

While Codir remains deeply cautious regarding the true intentions of the US and Israeli governments towards Iran, we are nevertheless hugely relieved that the perpetrators of this illegal, inhumane, and utterly unjustifiable aggression at least appear to have stepped back from the brink for now.

We implore the negotiating parties, mediators, as well as all responsible authorities in the international community, including the United Nations, to ensure that bona fide negotiations are conducted with a view to reaching a permanent settlement and an enduring peace thereafter with no further illegal attacks being wantonly launched upon Iran.

Codir will continue to call for peace, social justice, as well as accountability under international law and its necessary upholding, in the face of criminal US-Israeli aggression.

Codir calls upon its supporters and counterparts over the years, peace activists, and those campaigning for social justice, to guard against and loudly protest any attempt by the perpetrators of this criminal war of aggression to cynically exploit this period of negotiations as yet another elaborate ruse against Iran, or otherwise undermine them with a view to simply returning to bombardment and bloodshed thereafter.

The peace movement and progressives around the world must remain alert and vigilant over the coming days and weeks if a disastrous return to the war on Iran and a monumental catastrophe in the Middle East is to be averted.