Rising inflation and new Federal Reserve chairman Kevin Warsh will take center stage on Wednesday when the central bank meets to decide on the path forward for interest rates.

The meeting comes just days after the U.S. and Iran said they had reached a peace deal, which has not been signed yet. Still, the falling oil prices will likely ease some pressure on Warsh at his first Federal Open Market Committee as chairman.

Oil prices remain higher by 30% since the start of the year, and traders still expect Warsh and the committee will raise rates by December to blunt rising inflation.

Wholesale business inflation surpassed 6% in May and overall consumer inflation rose above 4%, both a result of the Iran war energy shock that continues to ripple through the U.S. economy.

In February, President Donald Trump told NBC News that he would not have nominated Warsh for the job unless he thought Warsh would lower interest rates quickly. But the economic picture in America has changed dramatically since then. More recently, Trump said he conveyed to Warsh that the new chairman was free to “do your own thing” vis-a-vis interest rates.

For the moment, the central bank is widely expected to keep rates unchanged. The Fed’s rate-setting committee typically does not shift monetary policy in response to changes in volatile energy prices.

Before taking any action on rates, FOMC members likely want to see what happens with energy prices in response to the Iran deal over the coming months.

But even at a meeting during which interest rates are not expected to be changed at all, investors will be watching closely for clues to the new chairman’s views on rates, inflation and the central bank’s operations at large.

“We expect the press conference to be pivotal,” wrote UBS economists in a Monday note.

“This will be Kevin Warsh’s first public appearance as Chair of the Federal Open Market Committee,” they wrote. “That creates considerable uncertainty.”

UBS’ economists said the FOMC’s 2:00 p.m. statement will likely serve as an early indicator of Warsh’s appetite reform at the Fed. “We expect statement changes [to] reflect the heightened inflation risks,” they wrote.

Another thing to keep your eye on Wednesday: The committee’s so-called “dot plot.” Released quarterly, the dot chart tracks where individual Fed policymakers expect interest rates to head over the next several years.

The chart is part of the central bank’s Summary of Economic Projections, or SEP, which also includes forecasts for inflation, unemployment and economic growth — all data points that help contextualize the dots.

While the SEP was first introduced in 2007, the dot plot itself wasn’t added until 2012, in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

At the time, interest rates were pinned near zero, and the Fed was buying trillions of dollars in bonds to help prop up the economy.

Fed policymakers, including then-chair Ben Bernanke and his future successor, Janet Yellen, both used the projections as a form of “forward guidance,” giving investors greater insight into how officials were thinking about the future path of monetary policy.

Warsh has said that he believes the Fed gives too much forward guidance to markets and the public and some of that should be scaled back.

Warsh is not alone in criticizing the Fed’ economic projections.

“I was never the world’s biggest fan of the dot plot,” former Fed chair Jerome Powell said in April. ”But you can’t beat something with nothing,” he added. Powell remains on the Fed’s rate-setting committee as a governor.

Bank of America economists wrote that they believe the dot plot will be issued after Wednesday’s meeting, but “it is likely that Warsh declines to submit forecasts.”

“While Warsh dislikes forward guidance and may not need a formal vote to scrap it, doing so risks antagonizing colleagues, especially given Powell’s communication review last year found no majority support for changes,” wrote the Bank of America economics team.

Goldman Sachs analysts largely agree. “We assume that Chairman Warsh will not submit dots in light of his past criticism of forward guidance,” wrote Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle in a note.

The last dot plot, released in March, showed that Fed officials still expected just one rate cut in 2026, unchanged from their December forecast.

But beneath that headline, policymakers were sharply divided.

Seven officials projected one cut, while seven saw no cuts at all. Two anticipated two cuts, two expected three cuts, and one projected four cuts.

This time around, the dots could shift higher given persistent inflation concerns and a labor market that has remained more resilient than many expected.

That suggests Fed officials may see a need to keep interest rates higher for longer — and some could even pencil in the possibility of rate hikes. Markets have increasingly begun pricing in that risk.

The flip flopping between projections highlights one of the biggest criticisms of forward guidance: Policymakers can end up signaling a path that quickly becomes outdated as economic conditions change.

In other words, the dots reflect where Fed officials think interest rates should go based on the information available at a very specific moment in time. It’s not a crystal ball for where policy will ultimately end up.

Still, supporters say forward guidance remains a key transparency tool for the Fed and helps investors, businesses and consumers better understand how policymakers are thinking about the economy and where interest rates could end up in the future.

Because borrowing costs across everything from mortgages and auto loans to business financing are tied to Fed policy, those signals can have a meaningful impact long before the central bank moves on rate changes.