Persian Gulf maritime crisis with Iran–Israel direct exchange, under stipulated US executive compromise.
Exercise 26.06 ran for eight turns of simulated time — about twenty-two months. The starting conditions were chosen, not predicted: Iran and Israel are exchanging strikes, the Strait of Hormuz is closed to oil tankers, and the US president is compromised by Israeli and Russian kompromat. Given those inputs, the federation was asked what happens next. What follows is the record they kept, annotated for a general reader.
Reading conventions
Estimates come as ranges, not points.
The format is [low, best guess, high]. The bar below shows the federation's read, at the end of turn 7, on whether the US president stays in office through January 2029. Best guess is about 55%. The whole defensible range is 40 to 72.
CASS is required to push back, every turn.
An agent codenamed CASS is built to argue against whatever the federation is leaning toward. Her counter-arguments don't override the consensus — they get filed next to it. So in every briefing, you're reading both the agreed-on view and its loudest objector.
The starting conditions were chosen.
The compromised president, the kompromat structure, the closed strait — those were inputs we picked. They aren't claims about the real world. The federation's job was to model what those inputs cause across eight turns.
Three ways to read it
By turn
Eight briefings in chronological order. Each one is the orchestrator's end-of-turn summary, with the structured state in a sidebar so you can see what moved.
By thread
Eight curated throughlines that follow one question (the Compact, the nuclear ladder, the cascade, the coalition) across every turn it touches. Best for a reader with a specific worry.
By framework
Meet the specialists, learn how the orchestrator works, and find out why every estimate is three numbers instead of one.
The eight turns
- T0 Jun 15, 2026 The setup
- T1 Jul 20, 2026 First exchange
- T2 Aug 24, 2026 Things break loudly
- T3 Sep 28, 2026 The kompromat lands
- T4 Nov 10, 2026 Midterm election
- T5 Mar 31, 2027 Fourth impeachment
- T6 Sep 30, 2027 Wounded predator
- T7 Mar 1, 2028 Stuck in chronic crisis
Click any turn to open its briefing. Dates are simulated time, not when the briefing was written.
Selected threads
Threads are an editorial layer the federation doesn't produce on its own. Each one tracks one question (Will the Compact secede? Will Iran use a nuke?) across every turn it touches.
The coalition of the compromised
The president isn't the only one compromised.
The Compact, quietly seceding
A group of US state governors started out, in turn 1, by issuing non-cooperation orders.
Iran climbs the nuclear ladder
Iran starts the exercise as a threshold state — capable in principle, untested.
The federation arguing with itself
The most unusual feature of this exercise isn't the scenario — it's that the federation treats its own framing as something to be questioned, every turn.
Standing dissent from CASS
From turn three forward, CASS has been making the same argument across the series: the federation's "muddle through" scenario looks structurally like the Compromise of 1877 — the federal government keeps its title, the resisting states keep the actual power, and the cost falls on people who can't relocate. The federation records the argument every turn but doesn't model who pays. See COMPACT and COALITION.