International Crisis Group

International Crisis Group is Brussels-based independent ngo founded 1995; produces field-based conflict prevention analysis and policy recommendations. 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 influence 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 supporting 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 US policy against an Iranian nuclear weapon, the United States had handed Iran a