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.

My fact-check confirms the situation is live and escalating: US and Iran have resumed tit-for-tat strikes after a fragile ceasefire collapsed, US forces hit Iranian coastal/energy targets, and Iran has formally asked the Houthis to stand ready to close the Red Sea gateway if the US hits Iranian energy sites. This is corroborated by the Middle East chain's HIGH-purity (0.88) 'Real Escalation' interpretation. Given already-active kinetic exchanges, the base rate for at least one publicly reported proxy strike on shipping/energy within 30 days is high. The geopolitician (my top-weighted geopolitics analyst) proposed this; the military analyst (weight 0.21) supports the mechanism. I raise slightly from the analyst's 0.73 to 0.80 given the confirmed active-strike environment, while leaving headroom for the scenario where escalation stays confined to direct US-Iran exchanges rather than proxy shipping attacks.