For the tenth night running, the sky over Iran is on fire. US strikes this morning hit targets in several parts of the country, and Iranian agencies are reporting explosions from the southeast to the ports of the Gulf of Oman. A war that has dragged on for nearly five months and refuses to find an ending - or at least someone willing to bring it to one.

The Iranian agency Tasnim reported detonations in Konarak, in Hormozgan province, and in the port city of Chabahar. State broadcaster Press TV carried word of strikes near Shiraz too, and the Fars agency of multiple blasts around Qeshm island and the city of Bandar Abbas. In other words - hits running the full length of Iran's southern coast.

Hormuz - the narrow pipe that carries half the world's oil

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the strikes began at 23:30 local time but disclosed no specific targets. The official phrasing is that the attacks are designed to „degrade Iranian military capabilities” used to attack commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Translated out of military-speak: they are fighting for control of one of the narrowest and most important throats of world trade.

And the fact that this is the Strait of Hormuz is no small detail. Through that war zone, barely twenty kilometres wide at its tightest, passes a huge share of the world's exports of oil, gas and fertiliser. When someone starts shooting at tankers here, the price of it does not stay in the Persian Gulf - it travels the world in ways anyone who remembers a single oil shock understands.

„The consequences of trusting America”

In the middle of all this, Britain's maritime agency UKMTO reported that a tanker had been hit by an unidentified projectile off the Omani coast, a day after another ship had already burned in the same zone. The crew abandoned ship and escaped in lifeboats, with no environmental damage reported. Neither the vessel nor its owner was identified - which by itself says how murky it has become who is hitting whom out here.

Iran's state agency IRIB, for its part, published a photo of the burning tanker with the caption: „The consequences of trusting America. This is a scene from Hormuz.” Propaganda, of course - but propaganda that works precisely because the scene is real. Iran's Revolutionary Guard added that two tankers had caught fire after explosions while trying to pass along the southern route. Reuters could not independently verify the claim, a good reminder that in a war like this each side is the first to release its own numbers.

Who exactly needs this war?

Tehran wants ships to pass along a route hugging the Iranian coast and keeps repeating that only the paths Iran dictates are safe. The argument over who commands passage through the strait has become the centre of the whole escalation. And it is a classic Balkan scene, looked at up close: two powers pulling for control of a single chokepoint, while the risk is carried by the ships, the crews and the trade that has to pass through.

The Balkans know this pattern by heart - when the big players quarrel over a crossing, the small ones watch from the side and hope it does not flare up worse. The question hanging over this tenth night of strikes is simple: which of the two actually wants to stand down first, and what if the answer is - neither?