War Returns: Iran Hits Jordan Base, US Strikes Near Bushehr

For Belgrade, a war in the Gulf is not a distant headline from the far side of the map. Every missile that lands near the Bushehr nuclear plant and every threat over the Strait of Hormuz feeds straight into the price of a liter of fuel at Serbian pumps, into the cost of the energy that heats Serbian homes, and into the calculation the government in Belgrade makes about how closely to track the common positions of Brussels. After the June memorandum on Hormuz collapsed, the confrontation between Tehran and Washington has entered a phase of open exchanges of fire, and that is a geopolitical reality no small, energy-dependent country can afford to ignore.

Overnight into Thursday, Iran fired ten ballistic missiles at Jordan’s Azrak air base, which reports say has been used by American forces. Jordanian air defenses intercepted eight of the projectiles, and Amman said there were no casualties and no material damage. Washington’s answer arrived in kind and for a second consecutive night: over two days US forces struck more than 170 Iranian targets, ninety on the first night and eighty on the second, turning the operation into the broadest campaign against Iranian infrastructure in recent memory.

Bushehr in Range: A Red Line Crossed

The most sensitive moment of the new escalation is the report that one American projectile struck the area around the Bushehr nuclear power plant, confirmed by the province’s deputy governor. The facility on the coast of the Persian Gulf has for decades been an unspoken red line for every side, a point no one wanted to touch for fear of a radioactive release along a densely populated shore. That line has now been crossed, if only at the edge of the complex, and it raises a question that diplomatic channels still cannot answer.

Tehran said fourteen people were killed and seventy-eight wounded in the strikes. The Revolutionary Guard warned that US bases across the region would become targets if the aggression is repeated, extending the threat to Washington’s allies from the Gulf to the eastern Mediterranean. President Trump, for his part, declared that the memorandum of understanding with Iran, signed in June to ease tensions over Hormuz, was over, erasing the last formal framework that had kept the two sides at arm’s length.

What Hits Serbia if the Gulf Catches Fire?

Serbia has no army in the region and no stake in the conflict itself, but it is sharply exposed to its consequences. A fifth of the world’s oil passes through Hormuz, and every day the strait stays closed or threatened pushes the price of a barrel higher, and with it prices at the pumps and on heating bills. Serbian citizens also work across the Gulf states, from the United Arab Emirates to Qatar, so any widening of the front raises the question of their safety and possible evacuation.

There is a diplomatic cost as well. As a country negotiating its European perspective, Serbia will come under pressure to align its stance with Brussels while it maintains economic ties with actors who read the crisis very differently. The EU High Representative has already called for restraint, but multilateralism proved powerless the moment the first projectile struck the surroundings of Bushehr.

If the Strait of Hormuz truly closes, how long can Serbia’s budget and its households bear the price of a war fought thousands of kilometers away?