The International Transport Forum (ITF), an organisation that brings together 72 countries, has a clear message about the Strait of Hormuz: even when it reopens, normal operations will be months away. A shock from which, as Secretary General Young Tae Kim put it, "the world will have to start thinking differently."

The numbers are brutal. The Strait of Hormuz normally carries 25% of the world's tanker traffic. In the first week of the declared ceasefire, only 45 vessels passed through. Around 1,000 commercial ships and 20,000 sailors remain stuck in the Persian Gulf.

Jet fuel prices have doubled. Airlines worldwide cancelled 13,000 flights in May alone. Lufthansa and Croatia Airlines have already trimmed their summer schedules. For a Balkan traveller this means two things: fewer destinations available direct from Skopje, Zagreb, Sofia; and higher prices on the routes that survived.

The ITF explains why simply reopening the strait won't bring normalisation. What is needed: rebuilding confidence in on-time deliveries, securing crews, sorting out insurance, and - the hardest piece - mine clearing. Each of those phases takes weeks or months. Cumulatively, the realistic timer is three to six months, not three to six weeks.

Kim closed with a general lesson: "This shock will change how we think." The world has built an economy on the assumed safety of every supply line. When one of those lines snaps, the whole chain shakes. The Balkans, importing almost everything, feels it directly. It is not just oil - anything transported by ship now carries a new price tag.