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Middle East crisis live: Trump leaves Situation Room to golf as ships report attacks and Iran closes strait of Hormuz

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) will blockade the strait of Hormuz again as of today, the IRGC warned in a statement published by semi-official news agency Tasnim News. “Approaching the strait of Hormuz will be considered cooperation with the enemy, and any offending vessel will be targeted,” the IRGC statement said. Donald Trump convened a White House Situation Room meeting on Saturday morning to discuss the renewed crisis around the strait of Hormuz and negotiations with Iran, according to reporting from Axios. A senior US official said that unless there is a breakthrough in peace talks, it appears that the war could reopen within days. Following initial talks between the US and Iran last weekend in Pakistan, the Iranian deputy foreign minister, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said a second date cannot be set until both sides “have agreed on the framework”. Iran’s supreme national security council, the country’s highest decision-making body under the supreme leader, said it is reviewing “new proposals” put forward by the US, according to Iranian media. Hezbollah has denied it was involved in the deadly attack against UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, which killed a French soldier. A UN peacekeeper was killed and three others were injured after a patrol came under attack from “non-state actors”, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon said. The Israeli military killed two Unicef-contracted truck drivers at a water point in the northern Gaza strip, forcing the UN agency to suspend its operations in the area, Unicef said. Pope Leo XIV said that it is “not in my interest at all” to debate Trump about the Iran war, but that he would continue preaching the Gospel message of peace. Trump left the White House Saturday afternoon to play golf, despite Iran’s re-closure of the strait of Hormuz in response to the US blockade of Iranian ports.

Investigators examine whether Ukraine terrorist attack was directed by Russia

Ukrainian investigators are examining whether a terrorist attack in Kyiv was directed by Moscow after a man shot dead six people on Saturday before he was killed by police. The gunman, 58, opened fire on passersby before barricading himself in a supermarket and taking hostages. Detectives sealed off the area in the Holosiivskyi district and tried to negotiate with him. He refused and was killed after a 40-minute standoff. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking in his nightly video address, said police and the security services were trying to establish a motive for the “tragic” attack. About 14 people were injured, including a 12-year-old boy, he said. “He took hostages and unfortunately, killed one of them,” Zelenskyy added. “He shot dead four more people right on the street, and one woman passed away in hospital after being seriously wounded. My condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims.” Local media named the perpetrator as Dmytro Vasylchenkov, a Ukrainian citizen who was born in Moscow. He had previously lived in the Russian city of Ryazan and was a longtime resident of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region. He had a criminal record, Zelenskyy said. According to a leaked Russian database, Vasylchenkov had multiple Russian bank accounts until at least 2021 and a Russian phone number. He travelled several times to Russia in 2016. Reports said he posted anti-Ukrainian and antisemitic content on social media and denied Ukraine’s right to exist as a country. He also fantasised about “cleansing” society using Hitler’s methods and regretted that Russia’s capture of Bakhmut in 2023 did not happen sooner. It is unclear what, if any, contact he may have had with Russia. Kremlin operatives have recruited more than 800 Ukrainians over the past two years, many of them teenagers, to carry out attacks on critical infrastructure and draft offices. The goal, officials say, is to spread uncertainty, fear and distrust. Shootings of this nature are extremely rare in Ukraine. Tymofii Solovei, a paramedic at the scene, said: “Either he is insane or this is a Russian terrorist attack. We don’t know how long he was preparing this. He may have been communicating with someone from Russia.” Before setting off on his killing spree, Vasylchenkov set fire to his fifth-floor home. Thick smoke billowed from the apartment’s window. He then emerged on to the street, shooting people at random, and headed towards a busy boulevard and shopping mall. By Saturday evening police had sealed off the area. Two bodies lay next to the entrance of the gunman’s building, wrapped in silver foil. Toys lay abandoned in a nearby playground. Video showed the gunman executing one person, then jogging calmly down a road. Tymofii Sergiichuk, a student, said: “This shocked me. We have pretty good security in Kyiv and there’s been nothing like this since the beginning of the war.” He added: “Right now people are already uneasy. This has scared them more.” Speaking outside the Velmart supermarket, Ihor Klymenko, Ukraine’s interior minister, said the suspect was the legal owner of a semi-automatic weapon. He shot “chaotically” at everybody he encountered, firing single rounds from his carbine. Officers tried without success to negotiate with him. The minister added: “We tried to persuade him. Realising that there was likely an injured person inside, we offered to bring in tourniquets to stop the bleeding and so on. But he didn’t respond. That’s why the order was given to eliminate him. Especially after he killed one of the hostages.” Klymenko declined to give a reason for the attack. “Investigators are currently working on it,” he said. “They are establishing the facts.” Ruslan Kravchenko, the prosecutor general, said the incident was being treated as a terrorist offence. He posted a photo showing a blurred prone figure covered in blood inside a store and a weapon lying nearby. Additional reporting Pjotr Sauer

French man, 86, issues historic apology for family’s role in transatlantic slavery

An 86-year-old man has issued what is believed to be the first formal apology by someone in France for their family’s role in transatlantic slavery. Pierre Guillon de Prince’s ancestors were shipowners based in Nantes, the country’s largest port for transatlantic slavery. They transported about 4,500 enslaved Africans and owned plantations in the Caribbean. Guillon de Prince said on Saturday that other French families must confront their historical allegiances to slavery and the state should go beyond symbolic gestures to address the past, including through reparations. He said: “Faced with the rise of racism in our society, I felt a responsibility not to let this past be erased.” Guillon de Prince made the apology at a gathering in Nantes before the inauguration of an 18-metre replica ship mast, alongside Dieudonné Boutrin, a descendant of enslaved people from the Caribbean island of Martinique. The two work together at the Coque Nomade Fraternité, an association dedicated to “breaking the silence” around slavery, and said the mast would serve as a “beacon of humanity”. Boutrin, 61, said: “Many families of descendants of slave traders don’t dare speak out for fear of reopening old wounds and anger. Pierre’s apology is a courageous act.” From the 15th to the 19th century, at least 12.5 million Africans were abducted and forcibly transported, mostly on European ships. France trafficked an estimated 1.3 million people. France recognised transatlantic slavery as a crime against humanity in 2001 but, like most European countries, has never formally apologised for its role. During his terms in office, President Emmanuel Macron has expanded access to archives on France’s colonial past. Last year he said he would establish a commission to examine France’s history with Haiti without mentioning reparations. France abstained at the UN in March from a resolution proposed by Ghana declaring slavery the “gravest crime against humanity” and calling for reparations. Lloyd’s Register, the maritime and industrial group owned by one of Britain’s largest charities, apologised in 2025 for its role in the trafficking of enslaved African people. The company said: “We are deeply sorry for this part of our history. Acknowledging this legacy is important for our organisation, the descendants of those affected and those who still live with the consequences of this trafficking, and society as a whole.” Lloyd’s Register is unaffiliated to the insurer Lloyd’s of London, which apologised for its role in enslavement in 2020. The same year, the Bank of England apologised for the involvement of some of its former governors and directors in the slave trade and pledged to remove all statues and paintings of them from public display in its headquarters in London. At least 25 governors and directors from the 18th and 19th centuries were or had been owners of enslaved people, or were linked to slave trading, according to a database compiled by University College London’s Legacies of British Slave Ownership project. A Bank of England spokesperson told the Guardian at the time: “There can be no doubt that the 18th- and 19th-century slave trade was an unacceptable part of English history. “As an institution, the Bank of England was never itself directly involved in the slave trade, but is aware of some inexcusable connections involving former governors and directors and apologises for them.” The slave trade was abolished in 1807 across the British Empire, but the ownership of enslaved people was not outlawed until 1833. The British government paid £20m in compensation to the former owners of enslaved people, a vast sum of borrowed money at the time that was only repaid in 2015.

Pope Leo says he was not ‘trying to debate’ Trump over US attack on Iran

Pope Leo XIV said on Saturday that it was “not in my interest at all” to debate the US president, Donald Trump, about the Iran war, but that he would continue preaching the Gospel message of peace. Leo spoke to reporters aboard the papal plane flying from Cameroon to Angola as part of his 11-day tour of Africa. He addressed the spiraling back-and-forth saga of Trump’s critiques of his peace message, which have dominated news headlines this week. But the American pope also sought to set the record straight, insisting that his preaching isn’t directed at Trump, but reflects the broader Gospel message of peace. “There’s been a certain narrative that has not been accurate in all of its aspects, but because of the political situation created when, on the first day of the trip, the president of the United States made some comments about myself,” he said, according to an official Vatican news agency. “Much of what has been written since then has been more commentary on commentary, trying to interpret what has been said,” the pontiff added. Trump launched the criticism on his social media platform on Sunday, when he criticized Leo’s preaching about peace as the war, which took to be criticism of the joint US.-Israeli attack on Iran, which killed civilians, including children, and was followed by Iran’s retaliation.. Trump accused Leo of being “weak on crime”, possibly because of the pope’s previous criticism of the president’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants on the false premise that they are mostly criminals, and claimed that the first American pontiff owed his election to Trump. Later in the week, the president justified his attacks on the Catholic leader by claiming, falsely, “the pope made a statement, he says: ‘Iran can have a nuclear weapon’”. The pope has, in fact, spoken out against what he called “the profound horrors wrought by nuclear weapons”. Despite Trump’s effort to justify his attack on Iran as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, there is also no evidence that Iran has had an active nuclear weapons program since 2003, when it was suspended by a decree from the country’s supreme leader. Trump’s intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, testified to Congress last year that the US intelligence agencies “assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”. Iran has repeatedly asserted its right, under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, to enrich uranium for peaceful, civilian purposes, including energy production. Leo has issued consistent calls for peace and dialogue, and has denounced the use of religious justification for war. Specifically, he called Trump’s threat to annihilate Iranian civilization “truly unacceptable”. The Vatican has stressed that when Leo preaches about peace, he is referring to all wars ravaging the planet, not just the Iran conflict. The Russian Orthodox church, for example, has justified Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine as a “holy war”. Trump’s attacks on the pope have divided his Christian followers, with some expressing their disgust but others defending the president and claiming the Catholic church lost its moral authority when it turned a blind eye to sexual predator priests. Sean Hannity, the Fox News host and staunch Trump defender, even told viewers this week: “As of today, I no longer consider myself a Catholic,” citing “institutionalized corruption” and “scandals” that went, he said, “all the way to Rome”. Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Leo referred specifically to his remarks earlier this week at a peace meeting in Bamenda, Cameroon. The city is the epicenter of a separatist conflict that has been raging in the western, Anglophone region of the country for nearly a decade. Leo also said that his remarks on Thursday, in which he condemned the “handful of tyrants” who were ravaging Earth with war and exploitation, were written “two weeks ago, well before the person had ever commented on me and on the message of peace that I am promoting. And yet as it happens, it was viewed as if I was trying to debate again with the president, which is not in my interest at all.” The Associated Press contributed reporting

Trump and Tehran’s series of mismanaged posts stall progress towards peace

A set of mismanaged and premature media announcements by Donald Trump and Tehran has led to the collapse of progress towards a peace settlement between Iran and the US. The recent missteps ended with Iran saying it would reinstate a complete block on the movement of commercial shipping through the strait of Hormuz and that it would not allow any of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium to be exported out of the country. The chain of events started when the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, posted on X on Friday soon after the markets opened in the US. “In line with the ceasefire in Lebanon the passage of all commercial vessels through the strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of the ceasefire [Lebanon ceasefire] on the coordinated route as already announced by the Ports and Maritime Organisation of the Islamic Rep of Iran.” His announcement knocked $12 off the price of a barrel of oil and was welcomed by Pakistan, whose officials had been in Tehran for three days trying to find a way to address Iranian preconditions for holding talks with the US. Araghchi’s post was potentially poorly framed or incomplete, and led to a big backlash, which was made worse by the fall in oil prices, and the news being welcomed and overinterpreted by Trump, who thanked Iran for opening the strait and agreeing to export its stockpile of uranium to the US. Some on Iranian social media even claimed that Araghchi’s post was designed to manipulate the markets. Iranian lawmaker Morteza Mahmoudi said if it wasn’t for wartime conditions, Araghchi should face impeachment over his remarks on X, accusing him of repeated “ill-timed” statements. Within minutes, Tasnim, a news agency close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, described Araghchi’s post as either wrong or incomplete. It said the post was “published without the necessary and sufficient explanations, created various ambiguities regarding the conditions for passage, details and mechanisms of passage, and led to a great deal of criticism”. Hardline press such as Kayhan was still demanding Araghchi withdraw his post when the newspaper hit the streets on Saturday. Even those sympathetic to Araghchi inside Iran, like politician Mahmoud Sadeghi, said the announcement should have been made officially, and not through a post that could be open to misinterpretation. The renewed impasse led to Trump threatening to restart bombing next week after the ceasefire between the two sides expires on Wednesday. It also sets up another potentially dangerous confrontation in the strait, which has so far avoided a direct naval confrontation between the US and Iran. Iran also insisted it told mediators it was unwilling to restart talks with the US in Islamabad on Monday, as had been widely rumoured, because the demands by the US were excessive. Iran’s tough approach reflects the dominance of the IRGC in determining Iranian foreign policy, as well as IRGC’s fears that Araghchi was making premature and unnecessary concessions to Washington. IRGC resentment was compounded by a series of upbeat posts on Truth Social from Trump, which Mohammad Ghalibaf, the speaker of the parliament and effectively leader of the Iranian negotiating team, said contained many lies. Later it was stressed that Araghchi had meant the strait was open only to ships authorised by the IRGC Navy and using permitted designated routes after paying the required tolls. The foreign ministry spokesperson underlined this point in an official interview, adding that no discussions had been had with the US about the future of Iran’s stockpile of uranium. Ghalibaf’s post ostensibly attacking Trump stressed that whether the strait was open or closed would be determined by the military and not by social media posts. Trump’s desperation for the war to end has seen him trying to speed through a process that he does not fully control, and which requires agreement from Tehran. Iran is still convinced that the strait remains its winning card and that time is on its side, so there is no rush for Iran to return to the talks. Pakistan for its part is trying to put together a string of confidence-building measures, which started with Trump applying pressure on the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to agree to a ceasefire in Lebanon. That was supposed to start a chain of confidence-building events, including the opening of the strait and the possible release of a first tranche of frozen Iranian assets. But Trump’s impatience led him to assume and pronounce too much, including continuing to insist that the blockade of Iran’s ports by the US Navy would continue. With Tehran in a defiant mood, Trump’s reaffirmation of the blockade by Saturday morning had become reason enough for Iran to announce that even the conditional passage of ships was being ended only 24 hours after the process had started. Iran claimed it was already using threats to force back Indian oil tankers. Warnings are also being issued by Tehran that it is close to relaunching missile attacks on Israel due to the breaches of the ceasefire in Lebanon. There is also the deeper problem that Iran believes it has a legal and moral right to seize control of the strait permanently. Reza Nasri, an Iranian lawyer, warned on Saturday: “Under international law, an international strait earns its special status of ‘transit passage’ from its role as a neutral passage connecting two open seas or exclusive economic zones used for peaceful international navigation. “When one side of this passage becomes a permanent military platform for the destruction of the opposing coastal state, that waterway no longer functions as a ‘normal’ international strait but rather becomes an extension of a hostile military zone.”

Iran closes strait of Hormuz again ‘until US lifts blockade’

Iranian officials say they have reversed the reopening of the strait of Hormuz and reimposed restrictions on the vital shipping lane after the US said it would not end its blockade of Iranian ports. A UK maritime agency reported that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) ships had fired at a tanker as it attempted to pass through the strait on Saturday. Reuters reported an Indian-flagged vessel carrying crude oil had also been attacked while in the waterway. Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya joint military command said on Saturday that Tehran had restored the strait to its “previous status” and was now “under strict management and control by the armed forces”. Iran said the restrictions would remain if Washington did not “ensure full freedom of navigation for vessels travelling from Iran to destinations and from destinations to Iran”. This was reiterated by the country’s deputy foreign minister, Saeed Khatibzadeh, and the IRGC’s navy command. Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of an annual Turkish diplomatic forum in Antalya, Khatibzadeh said the US “cannot impose their will to do a siege over Iran, while Iran, with good intention, is trying to facilitate safe passage through the strait of Hormuz”. In a post on X, the IRGC’s navy command wrote: “As long as the movement of vessels from Iran and to Iran is under threat, the status of the strait of Hormuz will remain as it was previously. Any breach of commitments by the United States will receive an appropriate response.” Iran officially closed the strait on 4 March in response to US-Israeli airstrikes on the country, and declared it back open on Friday after a 10-day ceasefire deal was agreed between Israel and Lebanon, as part of wider negotiations to achieve peace in the region. The UK’s Maritime Trade Operations Centre said it had received a report from a tanker that had been approached and then fired on by “two IRGC gunboats” 20 nautical miles north-east of Oman. The captain said there had been no radio warning beforehand. The agency added that the tanker and crew were reported safe, and authorities were investigating the incident. The announcement of Iran’s U-turn came the day after Donald Trump said the US blockade would “remain in full force” until a permanent peace deal with Tehran was reached. The US president also said that the temporary ceasefire with Iran, brokered by Pakistan and due to expire on Wednesday, may not be extended. US and Iranian delegations are expected to hold a second round of peace talks, although the timing is yet to be confirmed. Agence France-Presse reported that the Egyptian foreign minister said on Saturday there were hopes for a deal “in the coming days”. “We hope to do so [reach an agreement] in the coming days,” Badr Abdelatty said, adding: “Not only us in the region, but the whole world is suffering from the continuation of this war”. On Saturday night, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s top negotiator and parliamentary speaker, said there had been progress in talks with the US but there was still “a big distance”. Before Iran’s reversal, at least eight oil and gas tankers had passed through the strait in the brief window when it was open early on Saturday, according to maritime tracking data. About 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes through the narrow strait, which has become a focal point of the US-Israeli war on Iran. Its closure has driven up energy prices around the world.

‘We can’t wait’: Venice already seeking floods plan B five years after barriers’ launch

The Arsenale, the colossal shipyard that was the engine of the Venetian Republic’s domination for seven centuries, remains the nucleus of the city’s control over the water. Its northern section is made up of cavernous brick warehouses called capannoni, which in the 16th century could produce a warship a day through a rigorously ordered assembly line. Now, one of them houses the operations centre of the Mose, the sprawling flood defence system that protects the city. The name stands for modulo sperimentale elettromeccanico (experimental electromechanic module) and is a nod to the biblical character who parted the seas. For Venetians who have seen their city devastated by storm surges they call acque alte, there is something miraculous about it: the massive, luridly coloured flood barriers sunk into the seabed at three inlets between the lagoon and the Adriatic have saved Venice from potential flooding 154 times since they were inaugurated in 2020. But, despite the Mose having been in operation for only five years, city authorities are already looking for a plan B. Rising sea levels due to the climate crisis mean engineers are forced to raise the flood barriers more frequently, which damages the lagoon’s ecosystem. An alarming acceleration in sea level rise – an estimated extra metre by the end of the century – represents a “death knell for the city”, says Andrea Rinaldo, the head of the scientific committee of the newly appointed Lagoon Authority, the organisation that manages the Mose and is now also charged with working out what could succeed it. “With a metre more, you would have to close the Mose barriers on average 200 times a year, which means it’s practically always closed,” Rinaldo says. “When this happens, the lagoon loses its nature of being a transitional environment. It would become a filthy pond.” The tides create a natural exchange of water and sediment between the Venice lagoon and the Adriatic. The raised flood barriers block the flow of water, which encourages an excess growth of algae. When the algae die, they decompose, sucking out all the oxygen in the water and killing off fish and other marine flora. Rinaldo insists the Mose is not poorly designed. It was envisioned as a project for the future, but that future came far sooner than its engineers expected. He is urging immediate action. “You won’t have a lagoon. You won’t have a city. And all of this could happen in a timeframe that is comparable with the time that we had to design and build the Mose. We can’t wait.” It took five decades for the Mose to be designed and brought into operation, after Venice suffered the worst flood in its history on 4 November 1966. The idea for flood barriers was fleshed out in the 1970s and the module was built in the 1980s, but bureaucracy and concerns over its environmental impact delayed its implementation. In 2014, the then mayor of Venice, Giorgio Orsoni, was arrested on suspicion of corruption. His arrest tugged on a thread that revealed a network of cronyism and bribery that had swelled the cost of the project by millions of euros. Many Venetians were initially against the Mose because of its ballooning budget, its impact on the lagoon, and a certain cynicism that it would ever work. But then it did – and Venice has stayed dry ever since. The inside of the Mose operations centre in the northern Arsenale looks like a Bond villain’s hideout, or perhaps a Silicon Valley tech startup: glass staircases, gleaming white walls and offices hidden in frosted Perspex cubes. The control room has the feel of a war room with its curving wall of screens, which display a panoply of meteorological conditions that could combine to create a storm surge. One screen shows a satellite image of Venice, boats appearing as flecks of white spittle in the grey lagoon. Giovanni Zarotti, the Mose technical director, explains that the tides never go unmonitored. The control room even has an exact replica elsewhere in the Arsenale complex, in case of a power cut or another technical issue. It is a well-oiled operation but mistakes still happen. Zarotti says the decision is made to close the barriers three hours before the water level is expected to reach the height that would cause flooding. “We’re relying on God, statistically speaking. We have a margin of error of 10cm. If we forecast 110cm and order the closure, there could be a sudden drop in wind and the water only rises 98cm,” he says. Activating the Mose has a significant economic impact, not only because closing the barriers costs the city upwards of €200,000 (£175,000) each time, but also because it puts a halt to maritime traffic going through the Malamocco inlet on its way to the Marghera port. During the Venice carnival this year, the barriers were raised 26 times in just three weeks, costing the city more than €5m. Zarotti says the team is experimenting with raising the barriers at each inlet consecutively, to stagger the impact, and is considering raising the activation level to 130cm. He admits, however, that Venetians have grown accustomed to the Mose and are far less tolerant of even light flooding. The last devastating acqua alta the city experienced was in 2019, when the city was engulfed by 187cm of water, flooding 80% of the city. “Venetians now take the Mose for granted,” he says. “Many don’t even own waders any more. Imagine, if you’re six years old, you’ve never heard the sound of flood sirens.” What the next project will be still needs to be defined. Rinaldo is enthusiastic about the intellectual possibilities of the challenge at hand. He plans to put out a global call for ideas from leading thinkers across a variety of different disciplines, from art and economics to history and science. Each group of experts would be given a grant and a year to devise a proposal, which would then be assessed by a scientific advisory board. The chosen projects would then be given to city authorities to put into action. “Venice is a test bed for how we cope with these systems in the future,” he says, adding that it is a problem that can’t be solved by science and engineering alone. He believes it is vital the city is entirely reimagined, in particular redirecting Venice’s economy away from its reliance on tourism, which is just as much a threat to the city as rising waters. Otherwise, what he calls a jewel of artistic heritage would be lost. He lets out a laugh. “Over my dead body!”

Traders placed over $1bn in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war. What is going on?

Sixteen bets made $100,000 each accurately predicting the timing of the US airstrikes against Iran on 27 February. Later, a single user would make over $550,000 after betting that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would topple, just moments before his assassination by Israeli forces. On 7 April, right before Donald Trump announced a temporary ceasefire with Iran, traders bet $950m that oil prices would come down. They did. These bets and other well-timed wagers accurately predicted the precise timing of major developments in the US-Israel war with Iran, creating huge windfalls and raising concerns among lawmakers and experts over potential insider trading. Betting – once largely siloed to sporting events – has now spread to include contracts on news events where insider information could give some traders an advantage. The proliferation of online betting markets like Polymarket and Kalshi has allowed bets on virtually any news event. It’s also easier than ever to buy commodity derivatives like oil futures, where traders gamble on what the price of oil will be in the future. Leaders of some US federal agencies and some members of Congress said they want to crack down on suspicious trading taking place across different marketplaces, but it’s unclear how much headway regulators will make. “Is the problem that we don’t have legislation or that we don’t have enforcement capabilities?” said Joshua Mitts, a law professor at Columbia University. “To have a law that can’t really be enforced effectively given the technological limitations, it’s sort of putting the cart before the horse.” Perfect timing On the night of 27 February, the day before the US and Israel would carry out strikes on Iran, an unusual influx of about 150 accounts on Polymarket placed bets that the US would strike Iran the next day. A New York Times analysis found the bets totaled $855,000, with 16 accounts pocketing more than $100,000 each. Soon after, a single anonymous Polymarket user, under an account named “Magamyman”, made over $553,000 after betting that Khamenei would be “removed” from power just moments before he was killed by an Israeli airstrike, according to a complaint filed to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the federal agency that regulates futures markets, by Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group. The complaint also cites a crypto-analytics firm that identified six “suspected insiders” who made a total of $1.2m on Polymarket after Khamenei was killed. The well-timed surge of wagers were seen again on 7 April, when at least 50 Polymarket accounts placed bets that the US and Iran would reach a ceasefire hours before Trump would announce it in a Truth Social post. Earlier, the president had said “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran did not open the strait of Hormuz. But traders weren’t just active on Polymarket: there were similar surges of oil futures trading activity just hours before Trump announced updates to the conflict that would lower oil prices. On 23 March, traders placed $580m in bets on the oil futures market just 15 minutes before Trump said on social media that the US was having “productive” talks with Iran, according to the Financial Times. The traders made a windfall after Trump’s comments triggered a sell-off in the oil markets that made oil prices plummet. The same thing happened again on 7 April, this time when traders spent $950m on oil futures, betting that the price of oil would fall just hours before the ceasefire with Iran was announced. “We can’t say from the outset whether any of these trades were illegal. Any one of them could be lucky, and any one of them could be based on lawful information,” said Andrew Verstein, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. “But many of them bear the hallmarks of suspicious trades that would naturally warrant investigation.” ‘A wild west’ For those who closely follow trading patterns, the rush of activity that happened before these events seem too big to simply be bets hedging on luck. “Not only the timing, but the amount of these bets makes it look very likely that someone had insider knowledge … and placed very, very substantial bets on it,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen who filed the group’s complaint to the CFTC. Holman said he is skeptical about how bold the CFTC will be in its investigations given its current structure under the Trump administration. The commission typically has five bipartisan members that are appointed by the president. Now, the CFTC has only one commissioner: Michael Selig, whom Trump appointed at the end of 2025 and who has positioned himself as friendly toward prediction markets. Over the last few months, the CFTC has been roiled in fights with state legislatures who argue that regulation of these online betting marketplaces belongs to the states. Kalshi, Polymarket’s competitor, was temporarily banned in Nevada after the state sued the company for offering contacts in the state without a gambling license. Arizona meanwhile filed criminal charges against the company for allowing people to place bets on elections. In both cases, Kalshi denied any wrongdoing and has argued that the CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction over online prediction markets. “It’s a wild west phase, when we’re talking about the prediction market industry, and now it’s spilled over into the stock market as well,” Holman said. Anonymous sources told Reuters and Bloomberg that the CFTC launched an investigation into the oil futures trades that were placed on 27 March and 7 April, though the agency has not publicly announced it is conducting an investigation. Speaking to Congress this week, Selig said that the agency is prepared to go after those who are suspected of insider trading, warning “we will find you and you will face the full force of the law”, but said that the commission would not issue any new regulations until it had five seated commissioners. Polymarket did not respond to request for comment. In a statement, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said “federal employees are subject to government ethics guidelines that prohibit the use of nonpublic information for financial benefit”. “Any implication that administration officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting,” Ingle said. “The CFTC will always uphold its duty to monitor fraud, manipulation and illicit activity daily.” Risky bets Federal law prohibits government employees, including those working for Congress or the White House, from using non-public information for personal profit. In late March, a bipartisan group of representatives introduced a bill that would ban members of Congress and senior staff within the federal government from participating in prediction market contracts related to political events or policy decisions. But experts warn that insider trading law is complicated, and the new technology that makes it easier to place bets online leaves a complicated paper trail that can be hard to follow. Historically, insider trading takes place when a person uses exclusive information about a company to buy or sell stocks right before information becomes public. These types of illegal trades are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which regulates the stock exchanges. Insider futures trading could be seen as a subset of this typical insider trading, but the territory is new. “The trick is that there are essentially no clean cases of people getting in trouble for commodity futures insider trading,” Verstein said. “The law there is just not well-developed.” In a paper published last month, Mitts, the Columbia law professor, and other researchers screened more than 200,000 “suspicious wallet-market pairs” from February 2024 to February 2026 and found that traders in this group achieved a nearly 70% win rate, making $143m in well-timed bets tied to everything from the capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to Taylor Swift’s engagement to Travis Kelce. The paper notes that informed traders face fewer legal constraints by trading on platforms like Polymarket or Kalshi because these markets still operate in a legal gray area. “The challenge here is that this trading is occurring through the blockchain or other anonymized means, so it is going to be quite difficult for a regulator enforcement authority or prosecutor to determine the identity of the trader,” Mitts said. “They would also have to prove the trader traded on the basis of information that had been wrongly misappropriated.” But the stakes are high. Insider trading involving classified military information can lead to distrust of both markets and governments. “Unlike corporate insider trading, there’s a lot of ways for the government to make itself be correct. You can just make the war that would occur, and that’s concerning because then the real economy is being distorted,” Verstein said. “Real decisions, including perhaps financial decisions, are being distorted by financial bets.”