The conviction
Core Group was founded on a single conviction: that the region’s most consequential decisions are made with inadequate analysis.
Not because the information doesn’t exist. The Levant is one of the most observed, written about, and theorised regions in the world. The problem is structural: the information is unstructured, ungraded, and delivered too late. By the time a useful synthesis arrives, the decision it would have informed has already been made.
We built a firm to solve this. Our work integrates structured analytical products, applied strategic advisory, and analysis-informed mediation, delivered on cycles calibrated to the speed at which the situation changes.
The landscape
The analytical market the region currently relies on has three categories of provider, each with a defining strength and a structural limit.
The global firms have scale but not depth. An analyst writing about Lebanon inherits every distortion in the data they cannot verify. The local analysts have access but not structure. A single expert producing ungraded analysis from personal judgment is valuable until they are unavailable, biased, or wrong. The think tanks have rigour but not tempo. A paper published four weeks after the event informs scholarship, not the decision that was made on day two.
Core Group occupies the space none of them reach.
Whom we serve
For a diplomatic mission, we replace the need to hire a full-time political analyst, delivering more structured, more rigorous, and more timely analysis than any single hire can produce. For a development agency, we provide the conflict-sensitive analytical layer that procurement rarely funds. For a sovereign investor, we provide ground-verified data that official statistics conceal. For a mediation process, we provide the analytical backstopping that transforms dialogue into strategically informed negotiation.
Our team brings direct experience from within government, the United Nations system, and international advisory. We have supported analysis and dialogue processes across Lebanon, Syria, and the broader Levant for clients in government, diplomacy, international development, and strategic investment. Our products reach decision-makers in western diplomatic missions, multilateral organisations, and sovereign institutions operating in the region.
Distance flattens nuance. Proximity creates it.