🔮 Iranian Regime Is Cooked: Forecaster Who Predicted Israeli Strike

She predicted the Israeli strike months ago. Now she gives Khamenei a 15% chance of surviving 2025 in power

“Belikewater” (@Just_Curius on X) is a professional forecaster with the Sentinel Global Risks Watch forecasting team and Swift Centre. When we last covered Sentinel’s forecast of war with Iran in late March, she had the highest odds on the team for a hot conflict to erupt, which was a contrarian call at the time. The Oracle spoke to her on Monday, June 16 about her latest forecast: that the Iranian regime has just weeks left.

This interview has been edited for length. All answers are her own.

You were early on predicting this would turn into a hot war. What signals convinced you when others were more skeptical?

The first thing that caught my attention was Trump moving a whole bunch of B-2s over to Diego Garcia. That was a big signal to me. But then they all moved out, so for a while I was more optimistic that things wouldn't turn into actual kinetic conflict.

But I kept hearing the rhetoric out of Israel and it seemed like negotiations weren't progressing in a direction that would be sufficient for Israel not to pursue hostilities. The way I looked at it: Iran represents the greatest existential risk to Israel. Netanyahu has made such statements repeatedly, and if negotiations weren't going to be satisfactory to him, he would push for strikes. The question was whether his power was sufficient to do that, and the answer is clearly yes.

What changed to make this come to a head now rather than all the other times over the decades?

I see two or three main drivers. First, Trump issued an ultimatum. It's hard to issue an ultimatum and then not have something happen. That could have been defined as a win through the negotiation process, but it also set up the possibility of something new and different happening.

Second, Netanyahu's time as leader of Israel is limited, and this was a perfect window of opportunity to accomplish a long-term goal of eliminating the nuclear threat posed by Iran. For the first time, you have a leader of the US highly in sync with a leader of Israel in terms of eliminating that threat and being willing to potentially take risks that other combinations of leaders would not have in the past.

The final signal that told me this was definitely happening was when the US issued mandatory and voluntary evacuations of staff and family members in the region. Those orders aren't issued lightly. That said to me this was clearly likely to happen. Plus, we were coming up on Trump's 60-day deadline.

How do you assess Trump and the US strategic calculus here?

Trump is a bit more of a wild card. Pretty much anyone in a position of leadership in the US would agree that it's not in any form of US interest for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. The question is how to slow that down or stop its development.

Trump comes into play because on one hand he's opposed to US engagement in foreign wars, but on the other hand he's more volatile in his choices. You could imagine a scenario where he might have said "let's get this done, let's make sure Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon." But in reality, he's been a voice of restraint – first restricting US involvement, but also supposedly vetoing Israeli targeting of Khamenei and therefore regime change.

I could have pictured Trump influencing events in multiple directions, but his core tendencies to not involve the US in foreign military actions won out here. But he's not very predictable, which always makes it challenging.

How do you assess Iran's position now?

They're kind of cooked. Their military leadership is done, they're being picked off one by one, which really degrades their ability to respond. Even if they had amazing military capability, which they don't, it becomes harder to operate when your entire command structure is decimated.

Israel has damaged so much of the equipment they need to launch missiles that it's becoming hard for them to actually launch attacks. Iran's responses have always been extremely carefully calibrated: enough to satisfy domestic audiences but not enough to provoke Israel. They've done about exactly what I would have expected, throwing all kinds of missiles at Israel but not really actually doing much damage. There's just not much they can do against Israel's superior capabilities.

We're seeing reports of evacuations from Tehran and leadership potentially fleeing. How close is regime collapse?

Very close. Israel, and now Trump, have called for parts of Tehran to evacuate and the roads are packed with traffic, with people trying to evacuate. You've got Khamenei publicly saying anyone who leaves the country is a traitor. You don't make a statement like that unless you feel your regime is being threatened. It's really a statement of weakness.

There are reports that at least one high-level leader has made negotiations with Russian officials for safe passage for himself and his family. The regime simply isn't popular. It hasn't been for so long, and there aren't going to be a lot of people willing to defend it. Who really wants the regime to stay in power? The IRGC. They're the only ones who have really been involved in the response. The regular military is not. At some point, if the military decides the grass is greener on the other side, they might turn on the IRGC. The IRGC would be vastly outnumbered by the rest of the military.

Let’s talk about some individual markets. Polymarket has "Khamenei out as supreme leader of Iran this year in 2025" at exactly 50/50. What's your number?

I'd be somewhere around 85% for Khamenei out by the end of this year. For the market "Khamenei out as supreme leader by June 30th" that's at 22%. That is way underpriced. I think I'd be at about 60-70% on that one. Certainly by the end of July, I'd be at 70-75%.

There's also a market for Khamenei out as Supreme Leader by Friday at 12%, that's too high. How is that going to happen by Friday? It's not impossible, but I think the chance is pretty low.

I think it's much more likely we'll see some group within Iran depose him, or that he might simply flee, rather than Israel killing him directly. While he's the supreme leader and a big religious leader, he doesn't have the same stature as the Pope does among Catholics. There are other leaders within the Shia community who have even greater respect.

What about "Iran gets a nuclear weapon in 2025" at 15%. In a scenario where the regime holds on, do you think they would likely get nukes?

If anything, that's a little high. Maybe more like 5% because the Mossad is in there and they know what's going on. I think the chance that they could develop a functional nuclear weapon by the end of the year is extremely small. From a forecaster's point of view, anything in the 5-15% range is small—maybe 1% is more realistic.

What about "Will Reza Pahlavi enter Iran before September" at 11%?

Those markets look perfectly reasonable. I see Reza Pahlavi as a has-been wannabe. His family is mostly done. There is some support for the monarchy within Iran, but I think by and large that's not where most Iranians want to go. He's been auditioning for the role of Iran's pseudo-democratic leader, giving lip service to wanting democracy and putting himself out there as western-friendly, but I don't see him having enough support within Iran.

How about the "Fordow nuclear facility destroyed before July" market at 37%?

I think that's reasonable. It's not clear to me that Israel could do this alone—it would really require a bunker buster bomb that only the US has. If one were dropped, US involvement would be clear and absolute. What's more likely is that we'll see regime change before that becomes an issue, and a new regime would say "by all means, you want to come in and take care of this? Come on in."

What's your endgame scenario for how this plays out?

Israel has been preparing for this for a very long time. There's no way they would have risked all of this just to have a delay of half a year or a year in Iran's nuclear program. They're going for regime change. Netanyahu has said Israeli officials have a plan for 14 days of strikes—they have an agenda and they're not interested in negotiating.

Even though Iran now wants to reenter negotiations, I don't think Israel is going to stop, even if negotiations continue. The status quo is basically dwindling Iranian capacity to hit back at Israel while Israel has completely free reign to strike wherever it wants.

Israel is creating conditions for the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the government. They say they are creating these conditions, and they probably have some friends in Iran who they could be giving information or capabilities to who might do the job themselves, because the regime has a lot of enemies.

What happens after Khamenei falls? There are questions about whether the military could turn on the IRGC.

That's a complicated situation. When you have an authoritarian regime, independent power centers are crushed. There are multiple opposition groups but none has uniform support throughout the country. There are various ethnic groups that would like greater autonomy—Kurds and others—and opposition groups ranging from monarchists to leftists.

It's not clear where leadership would emerge that could take the reins even temporarily. For any group to have control, they have to have control over the guns. The IRGC controls so much of the economy—control of state-controlled enterprises would have to be wrested from them. IRGC members are chosen for devotion to regime ideology, so most likely they'll have to be deposed.

It's similar to what happened with Iraq when Saddam Hussein was removed—there was no homegrown national power base. I think we could expect different groups to end up fighting it out in some level of civil war. It's not going to be sunshine and roses after Khamenei is gone.

Any other risks you're watching?

The potential for oil market disruption. If Iran were to lash out and attack Saudi oil refineries or engage in other activity that roils oil markets, we could see prices go up dramatically with large repercussions. If we saw oil in the $150 per barrel range, that would have very large effects rippling through world markets.

The Polymarket question "Will Iran strike any Gulf oil facilities before July" is at 10%—I think that's about right. In our latest Sentinel report, I had the same 10% forecast for "Will Iran attack an oil facility in Gulf States by the end of August." It's low probability but very high impact.

For the "Strait of Hormuz closed or blocked in 2025" market that rose to 40% but has collapsed to 25%, I think they could try something in the style of the Houthis, attack a few ships, make life miserable, but it would make life miserable for themselves and invite attacks on them.

If Khamenei goes, is the Islamic Republic finished? Or could the new reformist president Pezeshkian play a role?

No, it's over. Once Khamenei is gone, the regime is gone. I don't think there's going to be a successor or continuation of the Islamic Republic. There's not going to be another Ayatollah. I just don't see any way that could happen given the decayed state of the regime and all the forces against it.

The regime was likely to be toppled within 1-5 years anyway due to economic problems, every winter getting worse with power outages affecting whole cities, high inflation, terrible economy. It was just a matter of time before there was some spark that would end things.

Now we have Israel destroying the entire leadership structure of the repressive regime apparatus, which happens to also be the military apparatus. I don't see how they can stay in power.

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