In theory, such bets run afoul of US financial rules, which bar trading on contracts involving war, terrorism, assassination, gaming or other illegal activities.

But that hasn’t stopped firms from taking in millions of trades.

Critics have seized on the activity, calling for a crackdown on the apps, which they say are facilitating unseemly, and potentially illegal, war profiteering, generating national security risks and enabling opportunities for insider trading and corruption.

“You have now opened up gambling basically on almost anything and it has turned into this very, very gruesome type of thing on the death of a head of state,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at the Public Citizen advocacy group, which recently filed a complaint this week over the bets.

Polymarket alone has hosted what Bloomberg estimated as more than $500m in bets related to the Iran war, at one point offering an opportunity to play the odds on the chance of nuclear detonation.

The company, which is headquartered in New York but operates on a limited basis in the US, eventually removed that market after it drew scrutiny on social media but users can still submit bets on questions like when US forces will enter Iran. It did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

Kalshi also ended up cancelling the Khamenei market, which had drawn $54m in trades, noting that US-regulated entities are barred from “having a market directly settling on someone’s death”.

The company, which did not respond to a request for comment for this article, has said the war bets are happening on unregulated exchanges outside the US.

Concerns about the war bets have collided with a bigger battle over how prediction market firms should be regulated.

Unlike traditional gaming firms, in which the odds are set by the company, prediction market companies function more like a stock exchange, allowing users to bet against each other on the outcome of future events using “event contracts”.

That design has allowed national financial regulators at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to claim oversight.

“Australians should be proud that it was in our country that these women experienced a nation presenting them with genuine choices and interacted with authorities seeking to help them,” Tony Burke said in a statement.

“While the Australian government can ensure that opportunities are provided and communicated, we cannot remove the context in which the players are making these incredibly difficult decisions.”

Iran’s sports ministry also earlier confirmed the news, first reported by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked Tasnim News Agency, in a statement.

“The national spirit and patriotism of the Iranian women’s national football team defeated the enemy’s plans against this team,” the statement says, also accusing Australia’s government of “playing in Trump’s field”.

Tasnim said the three were on their way to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to join the rest of the squad and were “returning to the warm embrace of their families and homeland after withdrawing their asylum application in Australia”.

It said they had resisted “psychological warfare, extensive propaganda and seductive offers”.

It means that, of the seven who initially said they wanted to stay in Australia, only three now remain as defectors. One of the players made the same decision to return to Iran on Wednesday.

Hamoudi and Sarbali were among the original five who refused, after giving minders the slip at the team’s hotel on the Gold Coast, south of Brisbane, last Monday and being taken to a safe house by Australian Federal Police.

Zahra Soltan Meshkehkar, a member of the team’s technical staff, was one of two more women from the group to seek asylum the next day. The other – Mohaddeseh Zolfi – changed her mind hours after being given the right to stay. She is understood to have already rejoined the team.

There was concern in Australia that members of the team and their families might face repercussions in Iran after the players refused to sing the national anthem.

One conservative commentator on Iranian state media accused them of being “wartime traitors” and called for a harsh punishment.

The team did sing the anthem in their last two games before they were eliminated on Sunday, leading critics to believe they had been told to sing by government officials accompanying them during the tournament.

The remaining Iranian players left Australia on Tuesday night local time – two days after they were knocked out of the Asian Cup.

[BBC]

Its effective closure, as well as strikes on shipping and energy infrastructure since the war started, has led to huge rise in global oil prices.

Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Saturday that “many countries” would be sending warships in conjunction with the US to help keep the strait “open and safe”.

He claimed “100% of Iran’s military capability” had already been destroyed, but that Tehran could still “send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close-range missile somewhere along, or in, this waterway”.

“Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint will send ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a nation that has been totally decapitated.”

He added: “In the meantime, the United States will be bombing the hell out of the shoreline, and continually shooting Iranian Boats and Ships out of the water. One way or the other, we will soon get the Hormuz Strait OPEN, SAFE, and FREE!”

Trump repeated his appeal in a post later on Saturday – extending it to all “the Countries of the World that receive Oil through the Hormuz Strait” – and said the US would provide “a lot” of support to those who participated.

The president has separately threatened to target Iran’s vital oil infrastructure on Kharg Island if its leadership were to “interfere” with ships seeking to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

He said the US had ‘obliterated” military targets on the small island off Iran’s coast on Friday, calling it “one of the most powerful bombing raids in the history of the Middle East”.

Iran’s military said oil and energy infrastructure belonging to firms working with the US would “immediately be destroyed” should the island’s oil infrastructure be attacked.

Tehran has been stepping up such attacks on energy targets in the Gulf, which have become a key element of its response to US and Israeli strikes. It warned on Thursday that any tanker bound for the US, Israel or its partners was a legitimate target.

The UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said in its latest update on 12 March that 16 ships were reported to have been attacked in and around the strait since the war began on 28 February.

Currently, not even the US Navy is escorting tankers through the narrow shipping lane.

Trump’s message came a week after he said the US did not need the UK to send aircraft carriers to the region and accused Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of seeking to ‘join  wars after we’ve already won”.

He also told the BBC’s US partner CBS that he “couldn’t care less” whether allies could do more to assist with the war, adding: “It’s a little bit late to be sending ships, right? A little bit late.”

He had already criticised Sir Keir for not joining the initial strikes on Iran and refusing at first to allow the US to use UK bases for its joint offensive with Israel – calling him ‘no Winston Churchill”.

The prime minister later approved “defensive” US action on Iranian missile sites from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, saying Iran’s response had become a threat to Britain.

The UK’s first and only warship set to be present in the region – the Type 45 destroyer HMS Dragon – departed for Cyprus on Tuesday, where it will bolster RAF Akrotiri after it was hit by drone strikes.

The Royal Navy used to keep minesweepers based in Bahrain, but no longer has that capability after it withdrew HMS Middleton.

Ministers have insisted the UK built up an RAF presence in the region before the conflict, with the aim of protecting British military personnel.