The U.S. military struck Iran on thirteen consecutive nights before going quiet after July 23 - the longest pause since this round of the war reignited in February. President Trump ordered the halt to give diplomacy room, and an Iranian official says Tehran will hold its own fire as long as the pause holds. Polymarket isn't asking whether a strike happened last night; it runs a set of markets asking whether the pause itself will last fourteen straight days, and those markets have repriced hard since the halt took hold. Numbers below are from the Gamma and CLOB APIs, fetched 2026-07-27 10:15 UTC.
01The ladder right nowEvery cutoff date priced higher than yesterday
"US x Iran Effective Ceasefire by...? (2-week pause)" is one event split into four live Yes/No markets, one per cutoff date. Each asks the same question with a different deadline: will there be a continuous 14-day stretch with no US strike on Iran, where the most recent strike fell on or before that date?
EFFECTIVE CEASEFIRE (2-WEEK PAUSE) PRICE 24H
By Jul 24 49.35c +12.5c
By Jul 31 55.50c +14.0c
By Aug 14 60.50c +5.0c
By Aug 31 68.00c +4.5c
The event has traded $630K in the last 24 hours against $297K of resting liquidity, and every rung moved up today - a mirror image of the ladder we covered on this same conflict five days ago, when strikes were continuing and every date was pricing more risk, not less.
02What changedThirteen nights of strikes, then none
Through July 23, the U.S. had bombed Iran every night for thirteen straight nights, the largest rekindling of the roughly five-month-old war since an April ceasefire briefly calmed it. Then the strikes stopped. Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters over the weekend that Trump had decided to pause the campaign to give diplomatic talks room to work - "he's giving talks some space, he's giving it a little bit of room," as Waltz put it. An Iranian official said Tehran would hold its own fire for as long as the American pause lasts. Neither side has declared a formal ceasefire; both are, for now, just not shooting. Today, Israel's prime minister is flying to Washington to meet Trump at the White House with the Iran war topping the agenda, before attending the funeral of the late Senator Lindsey Graham.
03The repricingTwo contracts, the same climb
Both contracts sat flat through most of the week the strikes were still running - the by-July-31 line spent days chopping between 14c and 19c, the by-August-14 line between 33c and 37c. The jump starts the morning of July 25, once two full nights had passed without a strike, and keeps climbing through July 26 as the pause held a third and fourth night: by-July-31 rose from 17.5c to 57.5c at its peak, by-August-14 from 33.5c to 63.5c. Neither line moved on a single headline the way a confirmed strike would move it - both climbed in the same stepped pattern, consistent with the market pricing in one more quiet night at a time rather than reacting to one announcement.
04Why later dates price higherA later deadline is a more forgiving bet, not a longer one
It looks backwards that "by July 31" (55.5c) prices higher than "by July 24" (49.35c) - surely a nearer deadline is easier to hit? It isn't, because of how the clock resets. Each market pays out if the most recent U.S. strike falls on or before its cutoff and a clean 14-day run follows that strike, whenever it happened. "By July 24" needs the current pause, which started July 23, to run the full fourteen days without one more strike breaking it. "By July 31" has a week of slack: even a strike on, say, July 28 wouldn't kill that contract, since a fresh strike on or before July 31 would just restart its own clean 14-day countdown. More slack before the cutoff means more ways to still land on a qualifying quiet stretch, which is exactly why the ladder climbs monotonically from 49.35c through 68c as the deadline moves out.
05The book behind the priceTight at the touch, thin just behind it
The by-July-31 contract's order book shows a 55c bid against a 56c ask right now - a one-cent market, tight for a contract that moved 38 points in two days. But the size sitting at that exact touch is modest: 227 shares on the bid, versus 11,588 resting one cent higher at 56c. That shape - a tight quote with real size just behind it rather than at it - is typical of a market that has mostly caught up to the news but where nobody is fighting to trade the last cent. For contrast, the separate "Israel x Iran ceasefire continues through...?" ladder, which tracks whether either side fires on the other at all, is pricing the nearest dates at 99c-plus: that front has been quiet since April and the market treats it as close to settled. The action this week is entirely in the newer question - whether the U.S. itself stays out of Iran for two full weeks.
06Watching a ladder like thisFour dates, one screen
A dated ladder like this is awkward to track one market at a time, which is how Polymarket's own site shows it - the point is comparing four prices against each other and watching which cutoff moves first. In polymarket-tui, opening the event lists every date's price and 24-hour 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.