Israel-Iran Ceasefire Odds on Polymarket: July 2026

The US military carried out its 13th consecutive night of strikes on Iran on July 23, and Iran rejected the latest truce proposal - delivered through Iraqi prime minister Ali al-Zaidi - saying it would only negotiate over control of the Strait of Hormuz. Polymarket doesn't run one ceasefire market; it runs a ladder of them, each asking whether the ceasefire holds through a specific date. Right now that ladder prices a near-lock through July 25, a coinflip through July 31, and long odds through August. Numbers below are from the Gamma and CLOB APIs, fetched 2026-07-24 09:15 UTC.

Five dates, five different odds

"Israel x Iran ceasefire continues through...?" is one event split into a separate Yes/No market per end date, each resolving early if either side launches a qualifying air or missile strike on the other's territory before that date. Three near-term dates have already resolved Yes; five are still live:

CEASEFIRE CONTINUES THROUGH        PRICE    24H
Jul 25                              78.00c   +3.00c
Jul 26                               68.00c   -1.00c
Jul 31                               49.00c   -11.00c
Aug 15                               36.00c   -11.00c
Aug 31                               27.00c   -12.50c

That's a term structure, not a single number: the market is confident the next 24-48 hours pass without a qualifying strike, genuinely unsure about the next week, and leaning "no" on a full month of quiet. The event has traded $1.19M in the last 24 hours against $293k of resting liquidity - one of the more active non-sports books on Polymarket right now, and every rung of the ladder moved down today except the nearest one.

A rejected truce, and a threat to widen the war

This ladder was created July 16, in the middle of an attempt to calm a conflict that first escalated in February. According to reporting cited in Israeli outlets on July 23, Tehran turned down a US-drafted ceasefire proposal passed along by Iraq, saying it would only discuss terms tied to the Strait of Hormuz - the shipping chokepoint Iran has repeatedly threatened to close. Iranian officials reportedly warned that if the US pressed further against Iranian infrastructure, they would widen the fighting into a regional conflict, including strikes on Tel Aviv and enlisting Houthi support to shut down shipping lanes. In the same window, Houthi forces attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, and a drone and rocket exchange hit a base hosting US forces in Kuwait. None of that is a strike directly between Israel and Iran - the market's specific resolution trigger - but it is exactly the kind of escalation that makes traders less willing to bet the ceasefire's specific terms hold for another week, let alone a month.

Two contracts, the same grind lower

Neither line moved in one clean drop the way a confirmed strike would move it - both ground lower over two days, consistent with a steady drip of escalatory headlines rather than a single resolving event. The July 31 contract opened the window near 68c, spent most of July 23 chopping in the high 50s to low 60s, then stepped down to the high 40s after the truce rejection became public. The August 15 contract shows the same shape a rung lower: from the high 40s down through the low 40s and into the mid-30s by this morning. Both are still open questions - nothing in either window counts as the qualifying strike that would resolve the market outright - but the price is doing what price does ahead of a resolving event: pricing in more risk before the event itself arrives.

Fast-moving prices, thin size at the touch

A useful gut check on a price like this is what's actually resting behind it. The July 31 contract's order book right now shows a best bid of 48c with only 3.79 shares behind it - about $1.82 of size - before the next bid steps down to 47c with $6,650 resting. The ask side is thicker near the touch: 261 shares at 49c. That lopsided, thin-at-the-top shape is normal for a market repricing quickly on real news: makers keep meaningful size a cent or two back rather than right at the touch, so the "current price" is more a consensus read on where the next trade clears than a deep, defended level. It's a reason to treat the exact cent - 48 versus 49 - as less informative than the trend across the whole ladder, which is unambiguous: every date further out priced in more risk today than yesterday.

Oil is pricing the same escalation

Polymarket's other read on this conflict sits in its commodities section. "What will WTI Crude Oil hit in July?" asks whether WTI touches a series of price thresholds intraday, and the $90 threshold now trades at 99.9c - up 26.9 percentage points on the day - meaning the market treats it as all but certain WTI has already touched $90 this month. The $95 threshold sits at 46.8c and $100 at 28.8c, both up on the day too. Houthi attacks on Saudi tankers pushed Brent crude above $100 a barrel on July 23 for the first time since May, per Middle East wire reporting - the same news driving the ceasefire ladder down is showing up, independently, in an oil market that has no resolution link to it at all.

Five markets, one screen

A dated ladder like this is awkward to track from Polymarket's website, which shows one market at a time - the whole point is comparing five prices against each other and watching which rungs move fastest. In polymarket-tui, opening the ceasefire event lists every date's price and 24h move in one table, and drilling into any one shows its live order book and price history inline. No account is needed to browse.

$ uv tool install polymarket-tui
$ polymarket-tui

The install page has Homebrew and one-liner options.