European and Gulf foreign ministers met in Muscat on Wednesday to formalize a contact group on Iran’s postwar reconstruction, the first multilateral diplomatic structure assembled since the April 15 ceasefire took hold. The group, convened by Oman and co-chaired with the European Union’s foreign policy chief, brings together envoys from Germany, France, Italy, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Pakistan, with the United States and Israel participating as observers.

The meeting, which ran for nearly eight hours at the Al Bustan Palace, produced a four-page communiqué committing the participants to coordinate humanitarian access, damage assessments and a phased framework for the resumption of civilian trade with Iran. It did not address sanctions relief directly, an omission that Iranian officials called “disappointing but not surprising.”

“We are not here to rewrite the political map of the region. We are here to ensure that water flows, that hospitals reopen and that families can return to their homes before the summer,” said Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi, who chaired the opening session. “The ceasefire is fragile. Reconstruction is what makes it durable.”

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, who flew in from Brussels on Tuesday night, told reporters the bloc would release an initial 420 million euros from its Neighborhood Instrument to support civilian infrastructure repair in southern Iraq and along the Iranian Gulf coast, where Israeli strikes in March damaged desalination plants and a section of the Bandar Abbas port. A second tranche, she said, would depend on “verifiable progress on ceasefire compliance and on protection of civilian sites.”

Iran was not formally represented, but Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi held what diplomats described as “structured side conversations” with the Omani and Qatari delegations over two days preceding the meeting. According to a senior European diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity, Takht-Ravanchi conveyed Tehran’s insistence that any reconstruction architecture must be matched by a corresponding loosening of banking sanctions, particularly the Belgian-headquartered SWIFT restrictions that have hampered humanitarian transfers since 2025.

The contact group’s launch comes against the backdrop of a ceasefire that has, by most accounts, held more firmly than analysts predicted three weeks ago. Sporadic violations earlier in April — a single Houthi cruise missile launch on April 16 and a rocket fired from an Iraqi militia stronghold on April 17 — have not been repeated. UN observers deployed to the Strait of Hormuz reported routine commercial traffic at near pre-war volumes by the last week of April.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, in a brief statement alongside the UAE’s Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, said the Gulf Cooperation Council would commit $2.3 billion to a reconstruction trust fund administered jointly with the Islamic Development Bank, with disbursements beginning in June. He stressed that the fund would be open to “verified non-military projects” inside Iran, a notable shift from Riyadh’s posture during the war, when Saudi officials publicly favored a punitive postwar settlement.

“What you are watching is the Gulf reasserting itself as the indispensable broker,” said Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst with the Middle East Institute. “Riyadh and Abu Dhabi understand that a destitute Iran is a dangerous Iran. The U.S. and Israel can sit at the back of the room, but the checks will be written in Arabic.”

The American posture at the meeting was deliberately restrained. The State Department dispatched Acting Assistant Secretary Daniel Shapiro as observer rather than a senior cabinet figure, a signal that the Trump administration is content for now to let regional partners take the diplomatic lead. A senior State Department official, briefing reporters at Foggy Bottom after the meeting concluded, said Washington welcomed the initiative but emphasized that sanctions architecture would remain “tightly held by the executive branch and Congress, not negotiated in Muscat.”

Israeli participation was sharper. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, attending as observer, used his speaking slot to warn that reconstruction funding “must not flow through entities affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” and circulated a list of 14 Iranian holding companies the Israeli government wants excluded from any contracts. Two European diplomats said the list would be reviewed but not formally adopted by the contact group.

Pakistan’s inclusion as a founding member reflects Islamabad’s elevated diplomatic stature after hosting the April talks that produced the ceasefire. Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar told reporters Pakistan would chair the technical subcommittee on cross-border humanitarian corridors, with a first working meeting scheduled for May 11 in Doha.

Notably absent from the Muscat gathering were Russia and China, both of whom have pursued bilateral reconstruction overtures to Tehran in recent weeks. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson in Beijing called the contact group “a useful but partial mechanism” and reiterated that the China-Iran 25-year cooperation agreement would proceed independently. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at a separate press conference in Moscow, said Russia had not been invited and described the initiative as “Western-led recolonization dressed in humanitarian language.”

The contact group is scheduled to reconvene in Brussels on May 28, with a technical-level meeting in Doha in the interim. Albusaidi told reporters at the closing session that the group’s first concrete deliverable — a joint damage assessment covering Khuzestan province, southern Lebanon and northern Yemen — was expected by mid-June. Officials said further announcements on humanitarian corridor protocols and customs facilitation would follow the Doha working session.