US coercion architecture dominates today's outlook: the confirmed naval blockade of Iran is set to persist and formalize even as crude stays capped near $88, while Trump's fresh 100% drone tariffs and a coming transshipment-enforcement squeeze reshape US-China trade. In parallel, Russia's FSB moves to legally absorb occupied Ukrainian territory, and China's AI stack tightens around a monetizing DeepSeek.

Fact-check confirmed this is no longer a proposal but an active reality: CENTCOM is enforcing the blockade (44 vessels redirected, 2 disabled as of Aug 3), and Iranian officials openly admit economic collapse risk and desperate need for sanctions relief. This moves the forecast from speculation to a persistence question, which raises the base rate for continuation. The geopolitician (my highest-weighted analyst at 0.43) and the military analyst converge, and the Middle East chain shows very high purity (0.88) toward the escalation interpretation. However, two forces cap my probability: (1) Trump's behavioral profile (BVI 8, escalate→maximum-pressure→claim-victory-deal cycle of 1-4 weeks) creates genuine reversal risk — his 2020 Iran pattern was rapid de-escalation after Iranian response; (2) my own military-sector track record is poor (Brier 0.37, overpredicting by 25pp), so I am compressing toward the mid-range and deferring to the Skeptic's 0.62-0.63. A physical naval blockade with deployed CENTCOM infrastructure is far stickier than a tariff tweet, which is why I hold above the dead zone at 0.64 rather than dropping it. The chief downside scenario is a Trump-brokered face-saving deal within the window.