Two American soldiers dead, one listed as missing, several more wounded. Iranian missiles hit the Muwaffaq Salti air base in Jordan - and in Washington they are no longer asking only how Iran struck, but who helped it strike so precisely.

According to sources close to the investigation, US agencies are checking whether Russia handed the Iranian side intelligence - satellite imagery, radar readings, technical help - in order to punch through American air defences. There is no direct proof. But the question has been asked, and that alone says a great deal about where the world has gone.

Missiles that change course in the last second

What rattled American analysts is not the number of missiles, but their behaviour. The Iranian projectiles showed the ability to change trajectory, altitude and angle of impact right before the target - a manoeuvre that shortens the time to intercept and leaves defence systems without enough seconds to react. This is not technology you buy at a market. This is technology someone taught you to use.

The Iranian strikes, according to the same sources, systematically hit radar and communications systems across Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Not random targets - but precisely the gaps that give the American military its eyes and ears in the region.

Moscow, Beijing and a newspaper from March

The suspicion towards Russia does not fall out of a clear sky. Back in March, an American financial paper wrote that Moscow had earlier handed the Iranian side satellite imagery and drone technology. Now China is being added to the list of suspects too - through the coordination of intelligence satellites.

The official line stays cautious: public evidence of direct Russian or Chinese involvement in this specific attack has not been presented. But when three of the largest military powers on the planet suspect that intelligence networks are interlacing against a fourth, the word „caution” sounds like a diplomatic term for something much larger.

Trump's answer

The US president ordered retaliatory strikes on Iranian surveillance capacities, military logistics, weapons depots and naval assets. The strike-retaliation-strike cycle the Balkans recognise perfectly - only this time it is played with missiles crossing continents, not borders.

For the reader here, the question is not whether this is far away. The question is how long a calculation like this stays „someone else's problem” before it starts carving up the prices, alliances and peace of an entire region. The Balkans know this scene by heart: the great powers play their games, and the small countries pay the consequences.