TEHRAN, FUTURE BUREAU — The actuaries have spoken, and their verdict is grim. Prediction markets on Kalshi, with nearly $114,000 in daily volume, place a 66 percent probability that the question of Iran's next Supreme Leader will be settled not by clerical council or constitutional maneuver, but by the simple, inescapable fact of death. This is not a forecast of succession — it is a wager on a funeral.

Ali Khamenei, 84 years of age and the iron hand behind the Islamic Republic since 1989, has governed with a secrecy that makes Western intelligence agencies envious and succession planners nervous. The Assembly of Experts holds nominal authority to appoint his replacement, but no transparent mechanism, no anointed heir, and no orderly transfer of power has ever been publicly rehearsed. Market consensus, in its cold arithmetic, has concluded that biology will force the question before political will ever does — and before January 1, 2045, at that.

The remaining 34 percent, however, belongs to a different story: voluntary abdication, forced removal, or some constitutional improvisation that the Islamic Republic has never yet attempted.