Ship in the Strait of Hormuz near Bandar Abbas, Iran, May 4, 2026.
Amirhossein Khorgoy | Isna | Wana | via Reuters
Iran believes it will be able to return the Strait of Hormuz to its pre-war status within a month of a peace deal with the United States, but traders at prediction market platform Qarshi are more skeptical.
They say there is only a 38% chance that traffic flow through the Straits will return to normal by July 1. The contract defines normal flow as a seven-day rolling average of traffic passing through 60 Channel crossings, based on IMF Portwatch data.
However, this level is higher than the roughly 32% probability that such a thing would happen, which traders had given before Wednesday’s new report.
Reuters quoted Iran’s state television as saying that the country was preparing a draft framework for a memorandum of understanding with the United States, in which details were revealed. The White House denied the existence of any framework with Iran.
Traders are confident that flows will return to normal by August 1. They predict a 60% chance of that happening, a better than 50-50 chance before the report.
But both of these odds are lower than what traders expected over the weekend, when it appeared that an announcement of a deal between the two countries could be imminent. As of Sunday, there was a 50% chance that traffic in the Straits would return to normal by July.
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