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. Its work spans roughly 60 active or recent conflicts, with programmes on the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Unlike think tanks oriented towards academia or governments, ICG's primary output is actionable recommendations addressed to the parties in conflict and the international actors with leverage over them.

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 as the 2026 war developed 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. By late April, Vaez had sharpened this into a broader verdict: that in attempting to prevent Iran from developing a weapon of mass destruction, the United States had handed Iran a weapon of mass disruption. ICG has also consistently challenged White House projections of imminent regime collapse, and its senior Yemen analyst Ahmed Nagi warned in mid-April that Houthi forces were "very likely to escalate in Bab el-Mandeb" if the Hormuz blockade began to bite — a dual-chokepoint scenario ICG assessed as still unpriced by markets. European foreign ministries have regularly cited ICG reports throughout the crisis; the organisation's analysis has shaped EU energy contingency planning and Ceasefire advocacy positions. ICG 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, producing analysis credible enough to survive The Information environment of an active war.