A day after the prisoner exchange in Doha closed the most charged chapter of the seven-week Iran war, governments on Sunday turned to the slower and more politically treacherous task of rebuilding shattered cities, restoring power to gulf ports and managing the return of more than two million displaced people across four countries.

Diplomats from the Islamabad mediation group — Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt — convened a closed-door working session in Doha to draft what one participant described as a “phase-two” framework for the ceasefire that took effect on April 15. The session followed Saturday’s handover, in which Iran released roughly 40 detained foreign nationals and the remains of seven U.S. service members in exchange for a smaller group of Iranian and Hezbollah-affiliated detainees held by the United States and Israel.

“The guns are quiet, but quiet is not the same as peace,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar told reporters as he left the morning session. “Phase two is about whether reconstruction can outpace resentment. That is the work of months, not weeks.”

The State Department confirmed that the remains of the seven service members were flown overnight to Ramstein Air Base in Germany and would arrive at Dover Air Force Base on Monday. President Donald Trump, in a brief written statement, called the families “owed a country that finishes what it starts” and said he had directed the Pentagon to accelerate the rotation of forces out of forward positions in Bahrain and Kuwait that had been surged during the war. About 350 American personnel were killed during the conflict, according to the Defense Department’s most recent accounting.

In Tehran, state media broadcast images of the returned detainees being greeted at Mehrabad Airport, where Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the handover as “a step taken without illusions.” He repeated Iran’s position that no negotiation over its civilian nuclear program would be tied to the ceasefire, a stance that has frustrated U.S. and Israeli officials but which mediators have so far accepted as the price of keeping the truce intact.

The early days of the ceasefire have not been seamless. A Houthi missile fired from western Yemen on April 16 was intercepted over the southern Red Sea, and a small rocket launched from an Iraqi militia position struck open desert near Ain al-Asad airbase a day later. Both incidents drew condemnations from Tehran and from the Islamabad group, and neither prompted a military response — a pattern U.S. Central Command on Sunday described as “the discipline we need to see continue.”

UN observers, deployed last week to monitor traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, reported that commercial transits had risen to 78 vessels on Saturday, the highest single-day total since early March, though still below the pre-war average of about 110. Insurance underwriters at Lloyd’s of London said war-risk premiums for tankers in the gulf had eased for a fourth straight session.

The scale of damage is only now coming into focus. Iraq’s reconstruction ministry estimated late Saturday that more than 4,300 housing units had been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable in Basra, Samawah and the southern suburbs of Baghdad, where Iranian missiles aimed at U.S. bases overshot or were intercepted with debris falling into civilian neighborhoods. In Yemen, where U.S. and allied strikes targeted Houthi launch sites, the World Health Organization said 14 hospitals were operating at reduced capacity for lack of fuel. Iran has not released damage figures from Israeli strikes on its nuclear, missile and refining infrastructure, but satellite analysis published by the Royal United Services Institute estimated rebuilding costs at $18 billion to $24 billion for the energy and industrial sites alone.

“The reconstruction bill is going to be the next political battle, and it’s going to be fought in three or four capitals at once,” said Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst. “Who pays for Basra? Who pays for Hodeidah? Who is willing to be seen writing a check to a Tehran that hasn’t apologized for anything? Those questions don’t have neat answers.”

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have signaled openness to financing reconstruction in Iraq and Yemen through a Gulf Cooperation Council-administered fund, but Gulf officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said no firm pledges would be made before a donor conference tentatively scheduled for early May in Riyadh. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said in Brussels that the bloc was preparing an emergency aid package of roughly 1.2 billion euros, the bulk of it earmarked for refugee return programs administered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

UNHCR estimates that 2.1 million people were displaced inside Iran, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon during the war, with another 340,000 crossing into Turkey, Jordan or Oman. Returns began this weekend in southern Iraq, where Iraqi army convoys escorted the first buses of families back to villages along the Iranian border. Aid workers cautioned that demining of agricultural land could take a year or longer.

In Washington, congressional reaction to the Doha handover broke along familiar lines. House Republican leadership praised the safe return of the foreign detainees but pressed the administration to detail what concessions, if any, had been made on sanctions relief. Senate Democrats focused on the cost of the war, with several calling for a full accounting before any supplemental appropriation moves through committee. A bipartisan group of senators said they would introduce a resolution this week formally recognizing the service members whose remains were returned.

Officials at the State Department said a working-level U.S. delegation would travel to Doha later in the week to participate in the phase-two sessions, and that further announcements on troop rotations and humanitarian assistance would follow in the coming days.