It took Polymarket less than 24 hours to turn a Middle Eastern war into an active trading floor.
Since the US and Israel launched strikes 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 by June.
The speed and specificity of the markets is striking. Bettors are not only betting on whether the conflict will escalate, but the pricing in the week it ends, who will replace Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and whether US ground forces will enter Iran by March 7.
Polymarket’s largest completed market is “Khamenei out as Iran’s Supreme Leader on March 31?” which cleared to 100% after Iranian state television confirmed his death on Saturday.
The contract drew $45 million in volume, making it one of the most traded geopolitical markets in the past week. The top trader, an account called “Curseaaaaaaa”, earned $757,000 on a “yes” bet. Four other traders cleared six figures each.
The chart in this market hovered between 25% and 50% through January and February when the tensions arose, then skyrocketed to 100% when the confirmation came through.
However, the biggest market is the “US knocking off Iran…?” contract, which has been live since December 22 and has now drawn $529 million in total volume, making it one of the largest single markets Polymarket has ever hosted.
That number 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 February 28 date alone attracted $89.6 million in trade. Every daily contract from February 28 to early March went “yes” after the strikes began, meaning that anyone who bought the specific date before the strike collected a binary bet on when the US military would bomb another country.
The market settlement rules were precise. That required drone, missile or air strikes on Iranian soil by US forces, not counting interception, cyber attacks and ground operations.
Now the trading action is moved to the next.
The Ceasefire Market gives only a 4% chance of a US-Iran ceasefire on March 2nd and 15% on March 6th, but jumps to 61% on March 31st and 78% on April 30th. Bettors are pricing a resolution within weeks, not months, consistent with bitcoin’s termination at $68,000 on the same thesis.
“Will the Iranian regime fall before June 30?” is at 54%, a sharp increase from the low-20s where it had been trading for months. The “Next Supreme Leader of Iran” market offers a 30% chance of the “position being abolished” entirely, meaning players are seeing almost a one in three chance that the theocratic structure itself will not survive. Ali Larijani, a former Speaker of Parliament, leads the named candidates with 21%.
The land invasion contracts also draw a lot. “Will the US Invade Iran Before 2027?” is trading at 19% with $207,000 in volume, while “US forces enter Iran on March 7” is at 28% with $2 million traded.
What Polymarket does here is something traditional markets structurally and legally cannot do. Stock and oil futures don’t reopen until Sunday evening, but on Polymarket anyone with a crypto wallet can make a decision on Iranian regime change in a weekend and see real-time prices from thousands of other participants doing the same.
But the most striking activity may have occurred before the first missiles landed.
Onchain analytics firm Bubblemaps on Saturday identified six wallets that collectively made $1.2 million in profits by betting on a US attack on Iran by February 28, the exact day the strikes took place.
Most wallets funded within 24 hours of the attack, bet specifically on the February 28 contract rather than broader timeframes, and bought “yes” stocks hours before the military operation began. The largest single wallet turned about $61,000 into over $493,000 in profit. Another brought in about $120,000 from a $30,000 position.
Meanwhile, the platform pays attention to the optics.
Polymarket added a note to its Middle East markets on Sunday, saying “the promise of prediction markets is to harness the wisdom of the crowd to create accurate, objective forecasts of the most important events for society.” It went on to claim that after talking to people directly affected by the attacks, it found that the prediction markets “could give them the answers they needed in ways that TV news and X couldn’t.”
The site also created an entire, dedicated section for Iran-focused markets.
UPDATE (March 1, 2026, 06:30 UTC): Adds additional details.
UPDATE (March 1, 2026, 07:15 UTC): Adds that Polymarket betting sets a new record for the platform.
