The US has struck Iran again - this time in the area of the Strait of Hormuz and Iran's Bandar Abbas airport. The targets, according to official Washington, were locations "posing a threat to US forces and commercial shipping", as well as Iranian drones. Iran responded with an attack on the US base in Kuwait - and a warning that the next responses would be "final".

The numbers: around 20,000 sailors stranded on hundreds of ships in a clogged Strait of Hormuz, Brent crude above $95 per barrel, and a three-year regional conflict already counting thousands of dead. The ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon officially exists - on paper. On the ground, it is a different story.

Donald Trump repeated the line that "no country can be allowed to control the strait - it has to stay open". Translation: if Iran tries to block it, the US will hit back. Kaja Kallas, the EU's chief of diplomacy, described the moment with precision: "between a very dangerous war zone and a peace zone." That is diplomatic language for "everything is in play".

For the Balkans, the price of oil is a direct threat to the inflation that had just started to ease. Every spike above $100 per barrel means more expensive fuel for September-October, more expensive food for the winter, and a new round of "transit crises" in Macedonia and Serbia. Is anyone here actually tracking the picture? Energy ministries may still believe a US-Iran ceasefire is primarily their plan.

What happens next depends on Tehran. Iran can carry out its blockade threats, and then every European oil importer gets a new reality. Or it can hold off - and then the US and Iran return to the current low-intensity military campaign with no formal declaration. Scenario-wise, the second is more likely. But the first is not impossible. Every energy strategy for summer 2026 is being rewritten right now.