Hedging Bets

A bombing in Buenos Aires over 30 years ago links two of the three people now running Iran’s war effort, and Interpol wants them arrested.

Israel’s citizens receive incoming missile alerts and have legally mandated shelters. Gulf states residents, not so much. Iranians … nothing at all.

Bettors have wagered one billion dollars on the Iran war – so far.

Read about it all below.

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Quote of the Week

“We don’t think the Iranians would have gone through all this trouble to choose a dead guy as the supreme leader, but at the same time, we have no proof that he is taking the helm.”

— Unnamed U.S. official, speaking to Axios

TOP OF THE NEWS 

Who Runs Iran? Who Speaks for Iran Now?

The supreme leader?

The president?

A wartime council?

Larijani’s replacement at the Supreme National Security Council?

Twenty-seven days into the war, we have more questions than answers.

Mohsen Rezaei. Photo: Reuters

1. The Wartime Council

The most interesting piece of reporting on this subject came this week from MBN’s correspondent Dalshad Hussein: Iran is now operating under an informal triumvirate led by Mohsen Rezaei, recently appointed senior military adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei; IRGC commander-in-chief Ahmad Vahidi; and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

Here’s background on each of them:

Mohsen Rezaei, 71, built the IRGC as an institution. He was appointed its commander-in-chief at age 27 in 1981 by Ayatollah Khomeini himself. He made four unsuccessful bids for the presidency, one of many reasons he’s widely ridiculed on Iranian social media (not to mention widely circulated photos of his belt buckle). He is also the subject of an Interpol Red Notice for his role in helping plan the bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994 that killed 85 people.

His co-accused in that Buenos Aires case is none other than …

Ahmad Vahidi, 67, the founding architect of the IRGC’s intelligence apparatus and the first commander of the Quds Force, the position later made famous by Qassem Soleimani. He represented the IRGC in secret Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages negotiations with the Reagan White House between 1985 and 1987 and played a role in establishing Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security in 1983. He was elevated to commander-in-chief of the IRGC on March 1 after his predecessor Mohammad Pakpour was killed in the opening strikes of the war. The IRGC has now burned through three commanders in under nine months. Like Rezaei, Vahidi is the subject of an Interpol Red Notice for his role in the Buenos Aires bombing.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, 64, has occupied so many positions in Iranian politics that it’s hard to keep count. Besides being mayor of Tehran for twelve years, he has served as national police chief and head of the IRGC air force, all before becoming parliament speaker in 2020. Like Rezaei, he ran unsuccessfully for president four times. As a former head of Khatam-al-Anbiya, the IRGC engineering and construction conglomerate that controls a substantial portion of Iran’s economy, Ghalibaf has spent decades at the intersection of military command and IRGC-linked economic power.

So the IRGC, as we’ve suspected, is no longer operating in the system’s shadows. It is the system.

2. Zolghadr: The Chair But Not the Seat of Power

The killing of Ali Larijani last week left two job vacancies. His title as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council has now gone to Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, 71, a retired IRGC brigadier general who served since 2021 as secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council. This is a largely symbolic role, and doesn’t involve much in the way of real decision-making.

Rezaei’s appointment filled Larijani’s more important role as wartime decision-maker and strategic coordinator. Neither man replaces what Larijani was. Zolghadr fills the institutional chair. Rezaei fills the power space. The two together still don’t add up to one Larijani.

Zolghadr is sanctioned by the U.S., UK, and EU under UN Security Council Resolution 1747, which targeted individuals linked to Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

3. Mojtaba: Still Absent

Three statements in 18 days. No video. No audio. The most recent, a Nowruz address, was read by a state television anchor over a still photograph, exactly the scenario this newsletter flagged a week ago as confirmation that the supreme leader is either incapacitated or in hiding.

Whether the cause is injury, security risk, or deliberate sidelining by the IRGC that installed him is unknown. The Islamic Republic has a supreme leader it does not show the world.

4. Pezeshkian: The Civilian Fig Leaf

The president’s position has become absurd. Pezeshkian holds the title of head of government but controls none of the levers that matter: neither the military, nor the IRGC, nor the security apparatus, nor the supreme leader’s office. He is formally chair of the SNSC, a body now led by an IRGC veteran as secretary and dominated by the war council.

On March 7, Pezeshkian apologized on state television to neighboring countries for Iranian missile strikes and announced Iran would halt attacks on Gulf states unless they were used as launchpads against Iran. The IRGC’s response was to continue the strikes anyway.

Meanwhile, the Americans appear to be using back-channel contacts that bypass the president. If that reporting is accurate, it tells you where Washington thinks power actually sits, and it is not with Pezeshkian.

The Diplomacy Void

The state of talks between the U.S. and Iran remains unclear. But here’s the structural problem:

Even if talks are taking place, it is not clear who on the Iranian side could make a commitment and guarantee it would hold. Larijani is dead. Mojtaba is absent. Pezeshkian has formal authority and no real power. Zolghadr cannot sit across a table from any Western government that sanctioned him.

The three-man war council that now holds real power has no one who can do what Larijani did. Rezaei and Vahdi carry active Interpol Red Notices for the 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires. Iran’s back-channel contact with the Trump administration appears to run through Ghalibaf, who is reportedly in conversation with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner while publicly denying any negotiations are taking place. Whether he has the authority to conclude anything remains a mystery.

ESSENTIAL READING

1. “Will Iran Turn to Terrorism?” — Foreign Affairs, March 24. Matthew Levitt at the Washington Institute flags the risk posed by the global sleeper network. A federal government alert shared with US law agencies indicated that encrypted communications believed to have originated in Iran may have been “an operational trigger” activating sleeper assets outside the country in the wake of Khamenei’s death. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s 2026 threat assessment separately concluded that prominent Shia clerics issuing religious decrees to avenge Khamenei’s death could encourage individuals to conduct terrorist attacks against U.S. targets worldwide.
2. “The Mojtaba Mystery” — Axios, March 21. The best piece this week on the command vacuum question. The CIA and Mossad conducted an active effort to gauge Mojtaba’s location and condition after he failed to appear publicly even for Nowruz, breaking with tradition his father observed annually. The intelligence picture is striking. “We have no evidence that he is really the one giving orders,” a senior Israeli official told Axios. “It’s beyond weird.” With Larijani now also dead, a senior Arab official told Axios that “the IRGC are taking over Iran and they are crazy.”
3. “Iran is already ramping up its next war. Guess who the ‘enemy’ is”— Washington Post Opinion, March 25. From the Center for Human Rights in Iran. “The Iranian regime is preparing for its next war — against its own citizens,” the authors write, pointing to the regime’s long history of imprisoning and killing those who dissent.

MISCELLANY

Looking up in Doha. Photo: https://www.instagram.com/qatarliving/

Shields and Sirens: How Citizens Are Protected — Or Not

Across the region, missiles are flying. Civilians aren’t safe. What’s being done to protect them?

Israel – Israel’s detection system for incoming missiles is fully automated: Radar tracks a launch, calculates trajectory, and triggers sirens only in projected impact zones, not nationwide. The Tzeva Adom and Pikud Ha’Oref apps push alerts to phones five to 15 seconds ahead of outdoor sirens, which is critical in a noisy city. Iranian ballistic missiles launched from 1,500 km away give Israelis roughly ten minutes of warning, though lead times compress sharply for shorter-range threats from Lebanon.

For citizens, every home built since 1992 is legally required to contain a reinforced safe room with steel walls, airtight doors, and independent ventilation, accessible within seconds. Roughly 62% of apartments still lack one, leaving those residents dependent on communal spaces, typically in basements, which becomes a serious problem when lead time is ninety seconds. The system has failed in this war: Nine people were killed when an Iranian ballistic missile struck a residential area in Beit Shemesh on March 1, hitting a public shelter and the synagogue above it.

Gulf States – Detection in the Gulf States runs through U.S.-integrated Patriot and THAAD radar networks. These are capable systems, but Iran specifically targeted the radar infrastructure early, destroying the THAAD antenna at Muwaffaq Salti in Jordan and the early-warning radar at Umm Dahal in Qatar within the first days.

There is no equivalent to the Israeli system anywhere in the Gulf. Gulf governments activated sirens and told their populations to stay indoors and head to the nearest safe place. Qatar’s Interior Ministry sent a national emergency alert to all phones in the country saying the security threat level was elevated and telling residents to remain indoors. The UAE pushes cellphone alerts that the U.S. Embassy itself notes “may not activate for all incidents.”

No alert, no shelter in Tehran. Photo: Reuters.

Iran – Roughly 80% of Iran’s air defense network was destroyed in the first week, eliminating meaningful detection capability over its own territory. B-1 bombers now operate over Iran with near impunity.

For citizens, there is no national civilian alert system. Internet connectivity has been close to zero for most of the war. Iranians are relying on Telegram channels and word of mouth. There are no purpose-built civilian shelters. The Iranian Red Crescent has confirmed over 82,000 civilian structures damaged or destroyed. The population is absorbing the strikes with no institutional protection whatsoever. Iranian state communications during the war have focused on military announcements and surveillance of dissent, not civilian protection guidance.

Left: The Times of Israel’s military correspondent, Emanuel Fabian, in southern Lebanon on November 21, 2024; Right: This photo taken on March 16, 2026, shows a bet on the Polymarket site titled ‘Iran strikes Israel on…?’ Photo: The Times of Israel

War as a Wager

Online prediction markets have turned the Iran war into one of the most lucrative and controversial betting events in the industry’s short history. The questions raised go well beyond that of ethics.

The two main platforms are Polymarket and Kalshi. Between them, Iran-related bets traded over $1 billion as the conflict began. Users have wagered on everything from the timing of strikes to the choice  of Iran’s next supreme leader to whether a nuclear weapon will be used. Polymarket eventually archived its nuclear detonation markets after public backlash. Kalshi, which bans markets directly tied to death, issued refunds on a multi-million dollar market on whether Khamenei would be ousted after his assassination rendered the question moot.

The insider trading concern stands out. A single trader made nearly $1 million across dozens of well-timed bets correctly predicting U.S. and Israeli military actions against Iran, winning 93%;of their five-figure wagers — which were placed hours before Israeli strikes in Oct. 2024, hours before U.S. airstrikes in June 2025, and hours before the Feb. 28 attack that started this war.

Separately, crypto analytics firm Bubblemaps identified six suspected insiders who made $1.2 million betting the U.S. would strike Iran, most uploading funds and placing their bets on the same day, hours before strikes began. One account, “Magamyman,” made $553,000 on Khamenei’s death, including a large wager placed when Polymarket odds put the probability of strikes that day at just 17%.

This is not a new pattern. Israeli authorities have already indicted two individuals, including a military reservist, for using classified information to bet on Polymarket during last June’s twelve-.day war.

The markets have also created direct pressure on journalism. The Times of Israel’s military correspondent received death threats from Polymarket users who had bet on an Iranian missile attack on Israel and were trying to get him to change his reporting to help them win.

Polymarket announced new insider trading rules on March 20. Michael Selig, the newly-appointed chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has moved to regulate prediction markets, affirming the agency’s authority to prohibit contracts on war, assassination, and terrorism.

Neither response has slowed the volume of the betting. As of this week, over $21 million has been wagered on whether a U.S.-Iran ceasefire will happen before March 31.