Geopolitics risk-on · 6–18 months
A what‑if from the future

What if a US-Iran nuclear deal reopens Iranian oil?

Supply-side relief: a US-Iran deal returns ~1.5m bbl/d, pressing Brent ~5% lower, dragging products and breakevens while VIX eases and Nasdaq rallies on the disinflation impulse. Rhyme is the 2015 JCPOA, after which Brent slid materially as Iranian barrels returned into an already-soft market. Forward angle: with OPEC+ managing quotas, Saudi may offset Iranian volume to defend price, so the crude downside could be capped sooner than 2015 — the cleaner expression is long breakeven-compression / short refined cracks rather than chasing flat-price all the way down.

16%
our model probability
over 6–18 months
prediction markets — the market's odds
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Anchored to measured history 16% · 90% range 0–32% · 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 6–18 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…

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What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a risk-on shock. A US-Iran nuclear deal is signed, reopening ~1.5m bbl/d of Iranian oil exports. 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.