Central Banks & Macro risk-off · 0–6 months
A what‑if from the future

What if failed sanctions talks collapse Iran's rial past 1.6 million?

Collapsed US-Iran waiver talks restranding oil receipts and gapping the rial past 1.6m is a geopolitical tail: Brent prices a supply/conflict premium higher and equity vol spikes, while the rial itself is uninvestable. Rhymes with the June-2025 Operation Rising Lion strikes and the 2024 missile exchanges that spiked Brent and VIX. China is Iran's residual crude buyer at a discount; the novel angle is that lost waiver barrels tighten the physical market just as spare capacity thins.

27%
our model probability
over 0–6 months
prediction markets — the market's odds
loading live odds…
Anchored to measured history 27% · 90% range 14–40% · 40 dated precedents behind it — a wider range means thinner evidence

Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.

The butterfly cascade

How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.

Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving

Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 0–6 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…

loading the timeline…

What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. A collapse of the US-Iran sanctions-waiver talks restrands oil receipts, collapsing the rial past 1,600,000/USD on the open market. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Geopolitical risk ▲ · Oil supply risk ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.

Methodology. Probability and impact are anchored to history and scored against what actually happens — wins and losses, in public, at Reality Check. Market odds live from Polymarket & Kalshi. By Vikas Singh, Quantitative Strategist. Updated 2026-08-13.