MARSEILLE, France — Foreign ministers from 27 countries closed a two-day summit at the Palais du Pharo on Wednesday with concrete commitments on Persian Gulf maritime patrols and a preliminary framework for routing reconstruction funds to war-damaged areas of Iran, Iraq and Yemen, marking the most substantive multilateral gathering since last month’s ceasefire took hold.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who convened the conference jointly with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, called the outcome “a Mediterranean answer to a Mediterranean problem” and announced that France would commit 1.2 billion euros over three years to a new mechanism the conference dubbed the Marseille Facility.

The facility, structured as a trust managed jointly by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Islamic Development Bank, is expected to channel an initial 8.4 billion euros in pledged contributions toward port repairs, water infrastructure and electrical grid restoration. Officials said the bulk of disbursements would begin in the third quarter once damage assessments under way by United Nations teams are finalized.

Iran did not attend the conference, but its absence was managed by what French diplomats described as a “shadow track” of consultations with Iranian officials in Geneva, conducted through Swiss intermediaries over the preceding ten days. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi released a statement from Tehran calling the Marseille framework “a step that can be built upon if it respects Iranian sovereignty and is not conditioned on political concessions.”

“The point is not to reward anyone,” said Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, in remarks to reporters on the conference sidelines. “The point is that fishermen in Bandar Abbas and farmers in Khuzestan should not pay the price for a war their government started and ours helped end. Reconstruction without preconditions is the only way the ceasefire becomes durable.”

The maritime portion of the agreement may prove the more immediate test. Conference delegates endorsed a 36-month rotation of multinational escort patrols in the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb, replacing the ad hoc U.S.-led Combined Maritime Forces presence that has policed those waters since the war’s onset. France will contribute two frigates and a logistics vessel; Italy, Spain and Greece each pledged one frigate; Egypt offered berthing rights at Port Said and Hurghada. India and Japan, attending as observers, said they would consider rotational contributions beginning in September.

Shipping insurers welcomed the announcement. The Joint War Committee in London, which sets surcharges for vessels transiting high-risk waters, said in a notice late Wednesday that it would review Persian Gulf premiums “in light of the new escort regime” at its next meeting on May 18. War-risk surcharges have already fallen roughly 60 percent from their April peak but remain elevated relative to pre-conflict levels.

“The Marseille architecture matters because it puts European navies, not American ones, in the frame,” said Hélène Conway-Mouret, a former French defense official now at the Institut Montaigne. “That is partly a question of capacity and partly a political signal that the Gulf states have been quietly requesting since the ceasefire. Washington remains the security guarantor of last resort, but day-to-day patrolling can be Europeanized, and that lowers the temperature.”

The U.S. delegation, led by Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, signed on to the maritime arrangement but did not contribute to the reconstruction facility. A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the administration was “supportive of the framework in principle” but constrained by congressional reluctance to fund any program that might benefit Iranian state enterprises. The official said the United States would instead double its bilateral assistance to Iraq, where 14 villages along the Tigris remain partially evacuated.

Saudi Arabia, represented by Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, announced a separate $3 billion pledge to a Gulf Cooperation Council-administered fund focused on Yemeni reconstruction, with disbursements tied to verified Houthi compliance with the ceasefire. The United Arab Emirates added $1.5 billion. Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said Doha, which hosted the April 18 prisoner exchange, would contribute logistical support but not direct funding.

Turkey’s participation drew attention. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan attended in person and committed Turkish naval assets to a parallel Black Sea-Eastern Mediterranean coordination cell, despite Ankara’s strained relations with several conference participants over the Cyprus question and Syrian border policy. Fidan told a closing press conference that Turkey viewed the war’s aftermath as “a moment for the region to act as a region, not as a chessboard for outside powers.”

Civil society groups offered mixed assessments. Médecins Sans Frontières and Oxfam, in a joint statement, welcomed the pledges but warned that 8.4 billion euros represented “perhaps a fifth” of preliminary damage estimates and that disbursement timelines were too slow for a humanitarian situation that the World Health Organization on Tuesday described as “deteriorating” in parts of southern Iraq and northern Yemen.

The conference declined to take up the question of war-crimes accountability, a topic several European parliamentarians had urged the organizers to address. French officials said the issue had been left to the United Nations Human Rights Council, which is scheduled to take up a Belgian-drafted resolution in Geneva next week.

Macron told reporters before departing the Palais du Pharo that a follow-up gathering would be convened in Cairo in September, with a wider invitation list expected to include Iranian observers. Officials said implementation working groups would meet in Brussels later this month to translate the Marseille pledges into binding instruments.