What if Israel bombs Iran's nuclear sites and Iran retaliates?
Clearest chain: strikes on Iranian nuclear sites bid Brent ~5% on a Gulf war premium, lifting refined products and breakevens, while VIX spikes and high-beta Nasdaq is sold. This is precisely the 2025 Operation Rising Lion template — Brent jumped, then fully retraced inside two weeks because Hormuz never actually closed and Iran's retaliation was symbolic. Skeptic's note: missile barrages move headlines, not barrels; fade the oil spike unless export infrastructure or the strait is genuinely hit.
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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. Israel bombs Iranian nuclear facilities; Iran retaliates with a large ballistic-missile barrage. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Geopolitical risk ▲ · Oil supply risk ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.