By the end of the year, Tehran and Washington will have a permanent peace deal in place, Iran's hardline regime will remain in power and exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi will not be back in his home country.
Those are some of the likeliest outcomes for the war in Iran, at least in the eyes of thousands of people hoping to make apparently easy money on the conflict.
Thanks to a proliferation of prediction markets, driven by industry giants such as Polymarket and Kalshi, customers can now place wagers on pretty much anything – from wars, to the weather, to which team will win the World Cup.
One Kalshi user last week made $2,000 simply by predicting that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would say “DJ” during a White House media conference. The diplomat's music mixing had been highlighted after he was seen playing tunes at a wedding.
Prediction markets, which are accessible across the Middle East including in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar, have been around for years but are having a moment in the spotlight thanks to their widespread adoption.
The investment research and asset management firm Bernstein has forecast that they are on course to more than quadruple in trading volume in 2026 from a year earlier, potentially hitting an annual volume of $1 trillion by 2030 as people and institutions jump on board.
But the surge has highlighted regulatory concerns and the markets' vulnerability to exploitation.
The most notorious case to date is that of a US soldier who was involved in the raid to capture then-president Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela in January.
Prosecutors say Gannon Ken Van Dyke made more than $400,000 trading on Polymarket on the basis of classified information regarding the timing of the raid. Mr Van Dyke has pleaded not guilty.
That case came after French authorities said they were looking into whether someone had tampered with a weather station to skew temperature readings and place bets on how warm it would be in Paris.
Adam Bjorn, founder of software and sports-betting company Plannatech, said prediction markets are vulnerable to insider trading.
“This is 100 per cent guaranteed to get manipulated and be dealt with in an insider-trading manner, because there's no real oversight,” he said from his base in Jamaica. “There's no one really protecting the consumers on these prediction markets everywhere.”
Some experts have also raised concerns about the ethics of speculating on a war or any other event involving human suffering.
What are the odds?
A look at Kalshi and Polymarket shows a seemingly endless cascade of bets that people can make on future events. Users buy either a “Yes” or “No” option priced according to demand.
Take Mr Pahlavi as an example. As of writing, a Yes trade betting on him returning to Iran by the end of the year costs 12 cents, meaning a $100 wager would net a payout of $833 if he does not go back.
The odds of the Iranian regime falling by June 30 are even slimmer, at 5 cents, or 5 per cent, meaning $100 would yield $2,000 if the hardline government collapses.
Polymarket was previously banned in the US for failing to operate without proper registration. The three-year ban was imposed as part of a 2022 settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Polymarket has since made a comeback and is allowing Americans to use the site in limited numbers. Users pay in crypto, and it is easy for anyone who is geo-blocked from accessing the site to do so using a VPN.
Polymarket is available in the UAE, seemingly without any restrictions. Polymarket did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Late last month, the US Senate voted unanimously to ban its members and staff from trading on prediction markets.
“We must never allow Congress to turn into a casino where members representing the public can gamble on wars or economic crises or elections,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said.
He called on Speaker Mike Johnson to immediately follow suit in the House of Representatives. In March, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order banning state officials from using confidential information to trade on prediction markets.
Braden Perry, a former CFTC senior trial lawyer now in private practice as an expert on regulatory enforcement in securities and digital assets, said there is no clear consensus in the US about how to regulate prediction markets.
“Right now, it's the Wild West,” Mr Perry said.
“There really will need to be an understanding as to what these markets are; whether are they are financial markets, are they derivatives, are they swaps, or is it gambling?”
Betting on sport was banned in the US until a Supreme Court ruling loosened restrictions in 2018, but since then bookmaking has proliferated across the country.
Mr Perry thinks prediction markets will continue to thrive under the Trump administration.
“You will see light touch to the industry from this administration … [which] … views evolving issues when it comes to novel technological issues with a relatively light touch,” he said.
President Donald Trump has spoken highly of prediction markets and their forecasts of his 2024 election win, saying that they were more reliable than “fake polls”.
His son, Donald Trump Jr, advises both Polymarket and Kalshi, while the President’s media company has announced plans to enter the industry.
