The United Arab Emirates have halted all trade and all financial transactions with Iran - indefinitely. The decision was announced by the state news agency WAM and confirmed by the director for strategic communications at the Foreign Ministry.

No further details were published, and that in itself says a great deal. When a state cuts off all money and all goods with its neighbour across the gulf and does not consider it necessary to explain fully why, it means the reason is more obvious than any statement.

Two missiles and one line that snapped

The Emirati move followed a report from their defence ministry that it had detected two Iranian ballistic missiles aimed at maritime traffic. Not at a military base, not at a city - at the ships. That is precisely the point at which this crisis stops being regional.

The Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz are an artery carrying a large share of the world's energy exports. Anything that frightens shipping operators there is priced into freight rates and insurance premiums the same day, long before it reaches any economy minister. That is why the Emirates are not reacting like an offended neighbour, but like a logistics hub protecting its own function.

The peace memorandum that did not hold

This comes amid heightened tensions in the Middle East, which escalated after joint American and Israeli strikes on Iran. Tehran responded with strikes on states hosting American military assets - the Emirates among them. So the country now severing trade had already been a target.

Mid-June looked different. Iran and the United States, with Pakistan mediating, signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the conflict and securing a lasting peace. Those talks collapsed. The reasons cited are disputes over the terms of the memorandum itself and disagreements about navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.

So it did not fail for lack of goodwill, but over the very thing that started everything - who will control the bottleneck the oil passes through. The memorandum was signed before that question was settled, which is the diplomatic way of saying it was signed before it was finished.

How far away this really is

The Balkans have a habit of treating Middle Eastern crises as somebody else's subject until something concrete starts to shift. This time the concrete thing has a name, and it is Hormuz - around a quarter of the world's seaborne oil trade passes through it. When a neighbouring state cuts off all financial transactions with Iran over missiles above the shipping lanes, that ranks higher than a diplomatic note.

Whether this reaches us, and to what degree, no forecast today can honestly say. What can be said is that the region around the strait is no longer behaving like somewhere expecting negotiations. It is behaving like somewhere preparing for something else.