Eighth Night of US Strikes on Iran, Two Soldiers Killed

For Serbia, whose fuel prices and energy stability are tied to peace in the Middle East and to free navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, the shift of the US-Iran war into a phase of the first American military deaths on the ground is not a distant story. It is a factor that could show up as soon as tomorrow at the pump and in budget forecasts. Overnight, the United States carried out an eighth consecutive wave of strikes on Iranian targets, this time shifting the focus onto facilities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the core of Iran’s military and security apparatus.

The immediate trigger for the latest wave was an Iranian missile attack on a US base on Jordanian territory. Two American soldiers were killed in that attack, while a third is still listed as missing. These are the first confirmed US ground losses since the exchange of strikes began, and that fact alone raises the stakes of the entire conflict, because casualties at home change the political calculus in Washington and narrow the room for de-escalation.

Tehran says the time for talks has passed

The messaging from Tehran rules out a quick calming of tensions. The Supreme Leader threatened unforgettable lessons if the strikes continue, while one Iranian official stated that the policy of negotiating during war is over. That closes a diplomatic channel that until yesterday existed at least as a possibility, and shifts the rhetoric toward the language of retaliation.

The Revolutionary Guard has also opened a maritime front of pressure. The force claims that ships which tried to pass through Hormuz by unsafe routes suffered accidents after ignoring Iranian warnings. The wording is carefully chosen, since it stops short of admitting a direct attack, but it sends a clear message to shipping companies and insurers that the world’s narrowest and busiest oil passage has become a risk zone. Any lasting disruption of traffic through Hormuz feeds straight into the price of oil, and through it into import-dependent economies such as Serbia’s.

The conflict is spilling beyond Iran’s borders as well. Air raid sirens sounded in Bahrain, home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, and Iranian drones struck the Kurdish region of northern Iraq near Erbil, wounding eight people. It is a pattern in which Tehran responds not only to American targets, but also to regional actors it considers part of the opposing infrastructure.

What does the escalation mean for the region and Serbia?

The tension has also reached Jordan, a key US partner in the region. The US Embassy warned of a specific and credible threat to the airport in Aqaba, a tourist and logistics hub on the Red Sea coast. Amman, however, denied that an evacuation order had been issued, trying to avoid panic and the message that the war is spreading onto its soil, even though the American base on Jordanian ground has already been targeted.

For Serbian foreign policy, which cultivates ties with both Washington and a range of Middle Eastern partners, a prolonged conflict means increasingly difficult balancing and pressure to take a clearer position. For citizens, the more tangible layer is the second one: war in the Middle East historically pushes energy prices higher, and the vulnerability of Hormuz and a possible disruption in oil supply reach the domestic market regardless of geographic distance.

With every new night of strikes and every new loss, the room to return to the negotiating table shrinks. So we ask you: can the entry of the US-Iran war into a phase of direct military losses still be halted by diplomacy, or has the region entered a conflict that will be measured in months?