Middle East and Russia dominate today's outlook: with WTI near $85, oil is very likely to stay below $140 even as confirmed US-Iran strikes make an Iran-linked Gulf/Red Sea shipping attack probable within a month, while Moscow instrumentalizes a confirmed restaurant bombing for a sweeping FSB crackdown and no formal Russia-Ukraine talks are expected before mid-September.

I merged three analyst proposals (military: mass arrests; political: broader network case; sociologist: repression/scapegoating) because they describe one coherent FSB response pattern. The bombing is confirmed real via fact-check, with the National Anti-Terrorism Committee already declaring it terrorism and Russian sources alleging GUR involvement — a ready-made justification. Forecast memory is decisive: a near-identical prior forecast ('Russian security services arrest multiple individuals for alleged collaboration') resolved CORRECT at P=0.95 with a strong Brier of 0.0025, with the lesson that regime-behavior base rates support high confidence. The FSB's demonstrated post-attack playbook (mass arrests, show trials, expanded surveillance, media instrumentalization) is near-automatic. Multi-analyst, cross-pillar (Game Theory, Psychohistory, Network Theory) support strengthens this. I hold at 0.86 rather than 0.95 because the merged criterion is compound (arrests AND a broader network case AND scapegoating within 30 days), each element adding a small execution/timing risk. Note: the sociologist component sits in my weak 'social' sector, so I anchor primarily on the military/political framing and the resolved-memory base rate rather than sentiment reasoning.