It took Polymarket less than 24 hours to turn a war in the Middle East into an active trading floor.
Since the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran on Saturday, the prediction market has seen a flood of new contracts covering everything from ceasefire timelines to whether the Iranian regime will collapse in June.
The speed and specificity of the markets are astonishing. Oddsmakers are betting not only on whether the conflict will escalate, but also on the week it ends, who will replace Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and whether U.S. ground forces will enter Iran before March 7.
Polymarket’s largest completed market is “Will Khamenei cease to be Supreme Leader of Iran by March 31?” which was 100% resolved after Iranian state television confirmed his death on Saturday.
The contract achieved volume of $45 million, making it one of the most traded geopolitical markets last week. The top trader, an account called “Curseaaaaaaa,” won $757,000 on a “yes” bet. Four other traders made six figures each.
That market’s chart oscillated between 25% and 50% throughout January and February as tensions rose, then shot up vertically to 100% when confirmation came.
The biggest market, however, is “Does the US attack Iran for…?” contract, which has been active since December 22 and has now achieved $529 million in total volume, making it one of the largest individual markets Polymarket has ever hosted.
That figure makes it the largest market in Polymarket’s “World” and “Geopolitics” categories by a wide margin, and the fourth largest in the broader “Politics” category, behind only Trump-related contracts from the 2024 election cycle.
The date of February 28 alone attracted $89.6 million in transactions. All daily contracts from February 28 to early March settled “yes” after the attacks began, meaning anyone who bought the specific date before the attack would collect a binary bet on when the US military would bomb another country.
The market resolution rules were precise. It required drone, missile, or air strikes on Iranian soil by U.S. forces, not counting interceptions, cyberattacks, and ground operations.
Now the trading action has moved on to what comes next.
The ceasefire market offers only a 4% chance of a US-Iran ceasefire by March 2 and 15% by March 6, but jumps to 61% by March 31 and 78% by April 30. Bettors are pricing in a resolution in weeks, not months, in line with bitcoin’s rebound to $68,000 according to the same thesis.
“Will the Iranian regime fall before June 30?” It stands at 54%, well above the 20 points at which it had been trading for months. The “Next Supreme Leader of Iran” market offers a 30% chance of “position abolished” entirely, meaning bettors see almost a one in three chance that the theocratic structure itself will not survive. Ali Larijani, former speaker of parliament, leads the named candidates with 21%.
Ground invasion contracts are also generating real volume. “Will the United States invade Iran before 2027?” is trading at 19% with $207,000 in volume, while “US forces enter Iran by March 7” is at 28% with $2 million traded.
What Polymarket is doing here is something that traditional marketplaces structurally and legally cannot. Stock and oil futures don’t reopen until Sunday night, but on Polymarket, anyone with a crypto wallet can take a position on the Iranian regime change in one weekend and see real-time prices from thousands of other participants doing the same.
But the most surprising activity may have occurred before the first missiles landed.
Onchain analytics firm Bubblemaps on Saturday identified six wallets that together made $1.2 million in profits by betting on a U.S. attack on Iran before February 28, the exact day the attacks occurred.
Most wallets were funded within 24 hours of the attack, bet specifically on the February 28 contract rather than broader time frames, and purchased “yes” shares hours before the military operation began. The largest single wallet turned approximately $61,000 into more than $493,000 in profits. A second made approximately $120,000 from a $30,000 position.
Meanwhile, the platform is aware of the optics.
Polymarket added a note to its Middle East markets on Sunday stating that “the promise of prediction markets is to harness the wisdom of the crowd to create accurate and unbiased forecasts for the most important events for society.” He went on to state that after speaking to people directly affected by the attacks, he found that prediction markets “could give them the answers they needed in a way that TV news and X couldn’t.”
The site also created an entire section dedicated to Iran-focused markets.
UPDATE (March 1, 2026, 06:30 UTC): Add additional details.
UPDATE (March 1, 2026, 07:15 UTC): He adds that Polymarket bets set a new record for the platform.
