Wednesday morning, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin, former head of Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate, dropped a bombshell on live television. In an interview with Israel's Morning News, the veteran spy chief delivered one sentence that sent pulses racing across Israel: "Last week, I had no qualms about flying to the Munich Security Conference. This coming weekend, I would think twice about boarding a plane."
The message was unambiguous: something major was imminent, possibly within the next 48 hours. Yadlin did offer caveats, saying "a great power doesn't go to war within days" and that "there is a diplomatic path" – but the implied travel warning captured the headlines.
Where people put their money, however, the picture looks entirely different. A look at Polymarket data shows the market isn't buying Yadlin's alarm. The trend is running in exactly the opposite direction. Polymarket is dismissing the immediate weekend panic, but it has flagged the end of March as an especially explosive target window. The most alarming figure on the trading board isn't just the high probability itself – it's the pace at which it keeps rising.
The probability of a strike by March 31 now stands at 49%. The truly staggering figure, though, is the one flashing green beside it – a 32% surge. This is no gradual uptick. It is a sharp reversal, compressed into a very short window.
Polymarket's skepticism toward dramatic declarations didn't come out of nowhere. Polymarket's "smart money" skepticism is rooted in the view that Trump avoids unnecessary entanglements, and in a proven record of market forecasting dramatic events – like the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro or election outcomes – better than any expert or poll.
