What if Iraq openly busts its OPEC+ production quota?
Baghdad openly busting quota and rejecting compensation cuts fractures OPEC+ cohesion, pressuring Brent lower and steepening the front of the curve; short Brent with a mild VIX bid on cartel-breakup risk is the trade. Rhymes with chronic Iraqi over-production disputes and the 2020 compliance fights that preceded the price war. Transmission: Iraq is OPEC's second-largest producer selling into Asia/Europe, so its defection undercuts the Saudi-led cut; forward angle: persistent Iraqi non-compliance plus Kazakh overflow in 2026 makes Saudi punishment-barrels likelier, amplifying the downside beyond a one-off revolt.
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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…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Baghdad openly busts its quota and rejects compensation cuts, fracturing OPEC+ cohesion. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Geopolitical risk ▲ · Oil supply risk ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.