By May 7, 2026, the US government will announce at least one of the following: (1) formal new OFAC/Treasury sanctions specifically naming IRGC naval units involved in the seizure, (2) deployment orders for an additional carrier strike group to the Arabian Sea or Gulf of Oman, or (3) a direct diplomatic channel opening resulting in the seized vessel's release — with Option 1 as the primary mechanism at ≥75% internal probability.

The four frameworks converge on YES via the same primary mechanism — IRGC naval sanctions — through four distinct causal pathways: (Institutionalist) OFAC path dependence and near-zero activation energy make sanctions the default institutional output; (Austrian) sanctions require zero adversary-model accuracy, making them the lowest-epistemic-demand instrument in the policy apparatus; (Marxist) the ‘piracy’ framing has crossed the ideological preparation threshold that historically precedes formal administrative action; (Keynesian) sanctions are the zero-fiscal-cost demand stimulus for political decisiveness under bearish domestic animal spirits. The four frameworks also converge on the LOW probability of the other two triggers within 14 days: diplomatic channel resolution requires standing architecture that was structurally destroyed in the maximum-pressure era, and CSG deployment faces coordination friction from the Navy secretary vacancy. The base rate of 0.82 (US formal response to Iranian maritime provocation within two weeks, 2019-present record) is slightly raised by the hardened piracy framing and the OR structure of the question, producing a final confidence of 0.79 — slightly below the 0.82 base rate because Trump’s bilateral deal-making aesthetic introduces non-trivial probability that the vessel is released via an unannounced back-channel that satisfies none of the three formal triggers.