TEHRAN — Iran’s Supreme National Security Council voted Thursday to accept the Marseille reconstruction framework in principle while attaching three conditions on disbursement and oversight, hours after Saudi and Iranian deputy foreign ministers held an unannounced meeting on the conference sidelines that French and Qatari officials described as the first publicly acknowledged direct contact between Riyadh and Tehran since the April 15 ceasefire.

The council’s communique, read out shortly after midnight Tehran time by spokesman Keyvan Khosravi, said the government welcomed the $84 billion pledge package announced over two days in Marseille as “an acknowledgment of damages caused by aggression,” but conditioned Iranian participation on three points: that funds destined for Iranian reconstruction pass through accounts under Central Bank of Iran control rather than through third-country intermediaries, that no pledge be linked to additional verification demands beyond those already agreed at Doha and Geneva, and that European sanctions targeting Iranian individuals not directly tied to combat operations be reviewed within ninety days.

“Iran did not come to Marseille, but Marseille has come to Iran,” Mr. Khosravi said in the brief televised statement, flanked by aides to President Masoud Pezeshkian. “We will work with the conveners on the basis of mutual respect. We will not accept a process that treats Iranian institutions as suspect by default.”

The Supreme National Security Council, which under the Iranian constitution must endorse major foreign policy decisions before they go to the supreme leader for final approval, met for roughly four hours Thursday evening, according to two Iranian officials briefed on the session. The officials said the discussion had been preceded by a written advisory from Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi recommending acceptance, and that Mr. Pezeshkian had personally pressed for a positive response in light of the deepening economic strain on Iran’s reconstruction provinces.

Iran’s economy, battered by six weeks of war and a sustained drop in non-oil exports, is contending with damaged refining capacity at the Abadan and Bandar Abbas complexes, fuel shortages in three provinces and a Central Bank intervention this week to defend the rial that consumed an estimated $1.3 billion of reserves in three sessions. Two Western diplomats with access to recent IMF technical assessments said reconstruction needs in Khuzestan, Hormozgan and Bushehr provinces alone exceeded $11 billion over the next eighteen months.

The sidelines meeting at Marseille, by contrast, was a piece of choreography that surprised even some of the conference’s organizers. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi and his Saudi counterpart, Waleed al-Khuraiji, met for ninety minutes Wednesday evening at the Palais du Pharo’s third-floor delegation lounge, with Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and a senior French official present at the outset before withdrawing, according to three diplomats with knowledge of the encounter who described it on condition of anonymity because the session had not been publicly announced.

The two deputy ministers covered four agenda items, the diplomats said: a Saudi proposal for a hotline between Riyadh and Tehran to handle maritime incidents in the Persian Gulf, the disposition of Iranian assets frozen in two Gulf jurisdictions, the status of the Hajj season for Iranian pilgrims in late June, and a joint approach to the Houthi political committee in Sana’a. No communique was issued and no follow-up date was announced, but a Qatari official said both delegations had agreed in principle to a deputy-level standing channel that would convene “as warranted.”

“This is the meeting that should have happened a year ago,” said Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional analyst at the Levant Policy Forum. “What is interesting is not the content, which was modest, but the fact of it. Riyadh and Tehran have spent two months passing messages through Doha and Islamabad. To sit in the same room, even on the margins of someone else’s conference, is the diplomatic equivalent of an exhale.”

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, asked about the meeting at a Thursday morning press availability in Marseille, did not confirm specifics but said it was “natural that neighbors talk when their neighborhood is being repaired.” He added that Saudi Arabia’s $15 billion pledge, announced Wednesday afternoon and tied in part to bilateral confidence-building measures, would be administered through a joint Saudi-Emirati-Kuwaiti facility whose governance would be finalized “in the coming weeks.” The pledge is contingent on Iranian implementation of the Doha framework’s missile and drone restraint basket, which is scheduled for substantive discussion at the late-May Muscat round.

The Marseille conference’s closing chair’s statement, released Thursday afternoon by the French and Japanese co-chairs, formalized the $84 billion target and set a disbursement architecture organized around four “channel ministries” — France, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Japan — each responsible for a thematic basket. France will lead the port, water and electrical-grid track; Germany the housing and municipal services track; Saudi Arabia the Yemeni and southern Iraqi rural reconstruction track; and Japan the maritime infrastructure and demining track. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Islamic Development Bank will jointly host the disbursement secretariat in Brussels, with a satellite office in Riyadh.

In Washington, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States “supported the framework” and would continue to channel its $6.5 billion pledge through multilateral instruments rather than direct bilateral aid to Iran. Asked about the Saudi-Iranian sidelines meeting, Mr. Rubio said the administration had been “briefed in advance” and viewed regional dialogue as “consistent with the President’s vision.” President Donald Trump, in a brief exchange with reporters at Joint Base Andrews on Thursday afternoon, called Marseille “a very, very successful conference” and credited “great cooperation” from Gulf partners.

Israel, which did not attend the conference, issued a written statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office welcoming the maritime patrol architecture endorsed Wednesday but warning that “no reconstruction funding should flow to entities affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or to the rehabilitation of dual-use facilities struck during the war.” The Israeli statement made no reference to the Saudi-Iranian meeting.

European officials said the next test would come at the Muscat round, where the Doha framework’s second working basket — missile and drone restraint — is scheduled to dominate the agenda. EU foreign policy chief Marta Stenberg, speaking in Marseille before her departure for Brussels, said her office had begun drafting an updated sanctions review timeline keyed to milestones the Iranian council had cited Thursday night. Officials said additional working groups under the Marseille Facility would be announced in the days ahead, with the first disbursement decisions expected at a Brussels secretariat session in early June.