Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered his first major public address since the April 15 ceasefire on Friday, conditionally blessing the $84 billion Marseille reconstruction framework while warning that Tehran would treat any U.S. attempt to use disbursements for political leverage as a violation of the truce and reserving for the Islamic Republic the right to walk away from the inspection regime “at the moment our sovereignty is challenged.”

Speaking for just over forty minutes from the Imam Khomeini Hosseiniyeh in central Tehran during an extended Friday sermon broadcast nationally on state television, the 86-year-old supreme leader endorsed President Masoud Pezeshkian’s decision to accept the Marseille terms with three Iranian conditions attached. The address was Khamenei’s most extensive public remarks since a March 31 televised statement at the height of the conflict and was watched closely in Western capitals for signals on Iran’s posture toward the verification track and the bilateral channel Tehran opened with Riyadh on the conference sidelines.

“The Marseille gathering was an admission, however reluctant, that the houses, hospitals and refineries destroyed in this war were destroyed by aggression and must be rebuilt at the expense of the aggressors,” Khamenei said, reading from prepared remarks in measured Persian. “We do not refuse this admission. We accept what is owed. But we will not exchange one form of pressure for another, and we will not accept the rebuilding of our cities as a key by which others enter our affairs.”

The supreme leader’s intervention had been anticipated inside the government for several days, according to two senior Iranian officials who described the deliberations on condition of anonymity. The officials said Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had pressed for an explicit blessing of the Supreme National Security Council’s Thursday night decision to accept the Marseille framework in principle, recognizing that without it the reformist-led government could face escalating attacks from conservative factions in the Majlis already restive over the rial’s slide and fuel shortages.

Khamenei delivered that blessing, but on terms calibrated to preserve his own room to withdraw it. He endorsed Pezeshkian’s three conditions — that reconstruction funds destined for Iran pass through Central Bank of Iran accounts rather than third-country intermediaries, that no pledge be tied to verification demands beyond those agreed at Doha and Geneva, and that European sanctions on Iranian individuals not directly linked to combat operations be reviewed within ninety days — and elevated each to the status of “red lines.”

He singled out the United States for sustained criticism, drawing a careful distinction between the European and Asian co-conveners of the Marseille conference and the Trump administration, which contributed a $6.5 billion pledge but has insisted that no U.S. funds flow to Iranian sovereign accounts. “There are two faces at this table,” Khamenei said. “There is the face of countries that lost nothing in this war and now claim the right to grade our compliance, and there is the face of countries that understand that a wound is healed by stitching, not by lecturing. We will work with the second face. We will be patient with the first, but our patience is not infinite.”

The remarks were welcomed cautiously in European capitals. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot called the address “a constructive contribution to a difficult conversation” and said France remained committed to opening disbursements through the Marseille Compact secretariat in the third quarter. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said co-chairs would convene a technical meeting in Brussels later this month to review the conditions Tehran had attached.

In Washington, the response was more guarded. White House press secretary Marlena Cortez said the administration had “noted the supreme leader’s remarks” and reiterated that U.S. participation in any reconstruction architecture would remain “tightly conditioned on verified compliance.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a separate statement, said the United States “does not require the supreme leader’s permission to enforce its sanctions laws” but added that Washington remained “supportive of the broader multilateral framework so long as it does not become a back door to Iranian rearmament.”

The address landed amid intensive diplomatic choreography. Iranian and Saudi deputy foreign ministers, who held their first publicly acknowledged direct meeting on the Marseille sidelines Thursday, are expected to convene a second round of talks in Riyadh on Saturday under Omani facilitation. The Iranian envoy, Ali Bagheri Kani, departed Tehran on Friday afternoon. Khamenei’s address contained a notable omission: he made no direct criticism of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or Qatar, all of whom announced multibillion-dollar reconstruction pledges over the two-day conference. Several Iran analysts read the silence as deliberate.

“What he did not say is as important as what he did,” said Dr. Maryam Tabesh, a senior fellow at the International Crisis Group’s Tehran office. “By aiming his fire at Washington and leaving the Gulf untouched, he created political cover for the Riyadh track to proceed and for the bilateral confidence-building measures Saudi officials have been pushing to be discussed seriously. That is a deliberate choice by a leader who does not usually leave such things to chance.”

Khamenei also addressed the domestic audience directly, acknowledging what he called “the heavy weight” of the rial’s slide, fuel shortages and disrupted services in Khuzestan, Hormozgan and Bushehr provinces. He praised the armed forces and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for what he described as a “defensive victory” and said the reconstruction effort would proceed “in the language of work, not the language of slogans.” He gave no indication of any imminent cabinet reshuffle, though aides to Pezeshkian have signaled in recent days that economic portfolios may shift in the coming weeks.

Markets registered the address modestly. Iran’s parallel-market rial firmed roughly 1.4 percent against the dollar in informal Friday trading, according to currency dealers in Tehran’s Ferdowsi district. Brent crude settled little changed near $90 a barrel in earlier London trading, with traders saying the absence of any escalatory rhetoric in leaked advance excerpts had already been priced in.

Diplomats said the next test would come at Brussels later this month, when the Marseille Compact’s implementation working groups translate this week’s pledges into binding disbursement instruments. A senior European diplomat, granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations, said Khamenei’s conditions were “negotiable in form if not in spirit.”

Khamenei closed with a forward-looking line that Iranian state media replayed throughout the afternoon. “The war is over,” he said. “The struggle for a just peace is just beginning. We will not lose that struggle by being impatient, nor will we lose it by being asleep.”