International Crisis Group

The International Crisis Group (ICG) is an independent non-governmental organisation founded in 1995 by a group of senior statesmen — including US Senator George Mitchell as first chairman — who concluded that the international community had failed to anticipate and respond to the tragedies of Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia. Headquartered in Brussels, with advocacy offices in Washington DC, New York, and London, ICG produces field-based analysis and policy recommendations designed to prevent or end deadly conflict. It does not mediate directly; it analyses, documents, and advocates.

ICG's Iran programme, led by Project Director Ali Vaez, has been among the most influential independent voices on the 2026 conflict. Vaez played a significant role in the analysis that supported the 2015 JCPOA negotiations, and in April 2026 his framing of the Strait of Hormuz as "much more potent than even a nuclear weapon" became one of the most-cited analytical formulations of the conflict's strategic logic. ICG has also consistently challenged White House projections of imminent regime collapse, with Vaez telling CNN in March 2026 that the Iranian leadership was "nowhere near the brink of collapse."

The organisation occupies an unusual position in wartime media: it neither supports nor opposes the US campaign, but documents facts and consequences that official briefings routinely omit. ICG's reports have informed European diplomatic positions throughout the crisis, particularly on the economic consequences of the Hormuz blockade and the risk that degraded Iranian conventional deterrence will accelerate its nuclear programme. Its role is not Mediation but the production of analysis credible enough to survive the information environment of an active war.