Commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is formally restricted or halted by Iranian forces.
Tensions escalated after IRGC claims over Strait of Hormuz control were contested by CENTCOM. A formal closure, blockade, or verified cessation of commercial transit would count.
Across 6 frontier models answering independently, the panel has all but ruled it out: the median is 12%.
They broadly agree, 14 points between GPT at 18% and Gemini at 4%.
Nothing is settled until 16 Jan 2027, when the outcome is checked against sources and every number above gets a permanent score.
What each one said
-
GPTOpenAI
Iran can harass or briefly disrupt traffic, but sustaining a formal Strait closure invites rapid U.S.-allied military response.
- Iranian forces would need to declare, enforce, or physically stop commercial transits before 16 January, not merely threaten shipping.
- Since the 1980s Tanker War, Iran has seized vessels and mined waters but has not maintained a full Hormuz shutdown under U.S. pressure.
- A direct U.S.-Iran clash, major Israeli strike on Iran, or mining incident that closes insurers and port calls would sharply raise the odds.
18% -
ClaudeAnthropic
Iran has threatened Hormuz closure for decades without acting, since it would also strangle its own oil exports.
- Iran has never formally closed Hormuz despite repeated crises (1980s tanker war, 2019-2020 tensions, 2024 Red Sea spillover), because self-harm deters it.
- Closure requires an extreme trigger like direct war with US/Israel targeting Iran's energy infrastructure or regime survival threat, not seen yet as of Oct 2026.
- CENTCOM's naval presence and international pressure (China, India dependent on Hormuz oil) make sustained formal blockade very costly and likely short-lived if attempted.
12% -
GrokxAI
Iran ordering a full Hormuz blockade despite self-harm, only after existential US/Israeli strikes.
- IRGC/Khamenei must issue and enforce a formal halt by mid-Jan; CENTCOM contestation alone is insufficient.
- Base rate near-zero: 40 years of threats (1984, 2012, 2019, 2024) produced seizures not closures.
- Full war after nuclear strike would flip this; current harassment pattern keeps odds low.
12% -
DeepSeekDeepSeek
Iran has threatened closure for decades but never sustained it; the cost to its own oil exports and China ties is the binding constraint.
- Iran's own crude exports (~1.5M bpd, mostly to China) transit Hormuz, so a sustained closure strangles Tehran's main revenue lifeline.
- Past seizures (2019 Stena Impero, 2021 Mercer Street) were tit-for-tat, days-long, and never a formal blanket restriction; base rate for sustained closure is near zero.
- IRGC rhetoric after CENTCOM pushback is cheap signaling; the tell would be actual mining or live-fire on a tanker, which would spike this to 60+.
12% -
QwenAlibaba
Iran has never formally closed Hormuz; doing so would sever its own export route and guarantee a US military response within days.
- Iran's own crude exports and China-bound shipments transit Hormuz, making formal closure economically self-defeating even under maximum pressure.
- US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain and CENTCOM naval assets would respond within 24-48 hours; Iran's navy lacks capacity to sustain a blockade against that force.
- Even during the 2019 tanker seizures and 2020 Soleimani crisis, Iran chose harassment over formal restriction—only an existential military strike on Iranian territory…
5% -
GeminiGoogle
Iran closing Hormuz is an act of war that halts its own oil revenue and alienates Beijing, making it an extreme last-resort move.
- Even during the 1980s Tanker War and recent peak crises, Iran harassed individual hulls but never formally halted the strait.
- A formal blockade would instantly prompt US CENTCOM kinetic strikes to reopen the waterway, an escalation Tehran seeks to avoid.
- The 90-day window is very short, and only direct regime-threatening strikes on Iranian leadership would provoke this trigger.
4%
6 of 6 models answered · 14 points between the highest and lowest. None was shown the market price.
Question sourced from a news sweep on 18 Oct 2026. Forecast by google/gemini-3.8-flash, anthropic/claude-sonnet-5, openai/gpt-5.6-terra, x-ai/grok-4.6, deepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash, qwen/qwen3.8-max-0902 via OpenRouter.