For the fourth day running, the US and Iran are trading blows, and the world once again has its eye on that same narrow strip of water through which part of the world's oil flows - the Strait of Hormuz. This time the threats came straight from the White House, and they weren't diplomatic.

"We'll destroy all their power plants. We'll destroy all their bridges if they don't sit down at the negotiating table," American president Donald Trump said in an interview with US television. Power plants and bridges - these are not military bases, this is infrastructure ordinary people depend on for electricity, water and movement.

And this is no small matter. Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure are treated as war crimes. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had already condemned such threats beforehand. When a president publicly vows to tear down an entire network of bridges and power plants, that's not a bluff that passes unnoticed.

Trump first threatened to impose an extra 20 percent levy on every cargo passing through the strait, then backed off and offered "huge" trade and investment deals to the Gulf states. At the same time, his administration reinstated a naval blockade of Iranian ports. A tactic familiar to anyone who follows politics - strike with one hand, offer with the other.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard confirmed it had attacked two United Arab Emirates tankers. One crew member from India was killed, another eight were wounded. According to the guard, the ships ignored the warning and switched off their navigation systems while trying to pass through a mined route.

The consequence is immediately visible on the markets: the price of oil jumped, and commercial traffic through Hormuz almost entirely stopped. US Central Command announced it had carried out new waves of strikes on Iranian military capacities.

And why does this reach us? Because when oil gets more expensive on a global level, the bill doesn't stop at Hormuz - it travels to every pump, every delivery, every price on the shop shelf. A war thousands of kilometres from the Balkans, yet the effect is felt at the nearest petrol station. Do we really think this conflict won't reach our pockets?