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.
how we built this number — every step
The class rate is measured from our dated, sourced event library (decade-normalized Poisson — the full table is public at base_rates.json). The variant’s share within its class is the analyst’s editorial call, published so you can audit it. A wider range means thinner precedent. Full recipe: methodology · scored at Reality Check.
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 (gold) over time vs the crowd's (Polymarket, blue), 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. The gold path is an illustrative reconstruction anchored to today's estimate — real dated events, not a live re-estimate history.
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.
If it happens — the markets it would move
Biggest moves first. Projected moves are cascade-model priors; hist A–B% = what comparable past events actually did (measured abnormal returns), and model prior · unmeasured marks markets with no analogue backing yet. Tap any market for its price history.
| Market | Class | Projected move | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Volatility (VIX) VIXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Vol | ▼ -10.2% hist -7.91–-2.14% · other way +11.59% (n=8) |
| 2 | Brent crude BRENTon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▼ -4.8% hist -3.23–-1.04% · other way -6.47% (n=8) |
| 3 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▲ +4.7% hist +1.29–+3.01% · other way -0.55% (n=8) |
| 4 | WTI crude CLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▼ -3.9% hist -2.93–+0.37% · other way -7.04% (n=8) |
| 5 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +3.4% hist +1.06–+2.58% · other way +0.13% (n=8) |
| 6 | Energy sector XLEon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.8% hist -2.29–-0.62% · other way -2.7% (n=8) |
| 7 | S&P 500 SPXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▲ +2.5% hist +0.27–+2.53% · other way +1.39% (n=12) |
| 8 | MicroStrategy MSTRon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +2.2% hist -5.82–+16.02% · other way +14.65% (n=8) |
| 9 | United Airlines UAL 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +2.4% hist +0.74–+1.55% · other way +13.09% (n=8) |
| 10 | ExxonMobil XOM 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.0% hist -1.73–-0.33% · other way +0.08% (n=12) |
| 11 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +2.0% hist +0.15–+2.35% · other way +0.42% (n=8) |
| 12 | Solana SOLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▲ +1.6% hist -1.76–+5.68% · other way +0.57% (n=7) |
| 13 | Chevron CVX 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.8% hist -2.09–-0.14% · other way +0.02% (n=12) |
| 14 | Delta DAL 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +2.0% hist +0.4–+1.89% · other way +7.19% (n=8) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade long on ARM/INTC/QCOM: the -5 to -7% analogues are idiosyncratic single-name events unrelated to an Iran-deal oil-supply easing; the realized move is driven by stock-specific noise, not this macro path.
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 40 analogous events (overlap‑weighted), as abnormal returns — market beta stripped, so it's the event's own effect, not the market backdrop. Shown at 20 days (persistent) and 5 days (immediate); ↺ fades = the two horizons disagree. Confidence = consistency × sample × significance.
| Asset | History says | Abnormal (20d · 5d) | Hit | n | Confidence | vs cascade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RTX RTX | SHORT | -3.1% · 5d -2.2% | 70% | 40 | 0.39 | ✓ matches cascade |
| SPX SPX | LONG | +1.3% · 5d +0.5% | 70% | 40 | 0.37 | ✓ matches cascade |
| QCOM QCOM | SHORT | -2.4% · 5d -1.4% | 71% | 39 | 0.30 | ⚠ differs |
| LMT LMT | SHORT | -2.3% · 5d -1.8% | 67% | 40 | 0.28 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XOM XOM | SHORT | -0.7% · 5d -1.5% | 63% | 40 | 0.25 | ✓ matches cascade |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.5% · 5d -0.2% | 66% | 39 | 0.23 | ⚠ differs |
| TSM TSM | LONG | +1.6% · 5d -1.2% ↺ fades | 63% | 39 | 0.22 | ✓ matches cascade |
| INTC INTC | SHORT | -0.6% · 5d -0.4% | 63% | 40 | 0.22 | ⚠ differs |
| ARM ARM | SHORT | -1.8% · 5d -8.1% | 62% | 14 | 0.22 | ⚠ differs |
| HOOD HOOD | LONG | +9.9% · 5d +0.2% | 62% | 24 | 0.22 | ✓ matches cascade |
| SMH SMH | LONG | +1.2% · 5d -0.3% ↺ fades | 61% | 39 | 0.19 | ✓ matches cascade |
| Volatility VIX | SHORT | -2.5% · 5d -5.8% | 60% | 40 | 0.17 | ✓ matches cascade |
| CNY CNY | SHORT | -0.4% · 5d -0.2% | 59% | 39 | 0.17 | ⚠ differs |
| MRVL MRVL | LONG | +1.3% · 5d -1.1% ↺ fades | 61% | 39 | 0.16 | ✓ matches cascade |
Why this probability
US-Iran deal possible post-strikes but trust shattered; verification hard; 18mo modest odds. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.