Iran's Revolutionary Guard announced it had struck and stopped two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz early this morning. Another four, according to the same statement, quickly changed course and turned back.

The justification is the part worth reading carefully. The Guard claims the tankers were moving along an „unsafe and illegal route“, on an undeclared path, under air escort from the American military - because, as the statement puts it, they „thought they could“ pass under the influence of US Central Command.

In the same statement, the Guard notes that the previous night it had informed all shipping and insurance companies to ignore announcements from the American command.

That is not a message to the ships

You do not send a message to insurance houses in order to protect navigation. You send it because insurance is where everything actually gets decided. If an insurer judges a route carries risk, the premium jumps, and some companies simply stop covering it. The tanker is then not stopped by a missile - it is stopped by a document.

The Strait of Hormuz is the narrowest bottleneck in the world oil trade. Every incident in those waters raises the risk, and risk is priced in long before anyone has fired anything at all.

Two versions, no verification

What is missing from the whole story is independent confirmation. The sole source for the event is the Revolutionary Guard itself, via the Iranian state agency. Which tankers these were, whose flag they sailed under, what damage they sustained, whether anyone was injured - none of it has been disclosed.

A statement with no ship names is a statement aimed at somebody else, not at the public. Tehran is talking to Washington, and the news is merely the channel the message travels through.

Will this reach us? Hormuz does not ask permission to move markets - it is one of the few points on the planet where a single incident gets priced in everywhere. And the Balkans have not one tanker in those waters, not one voice in that argument, and no way of influencing the outcome.