US/Israel-Iran: Peace was 'within reach'; so why the strike?

Screengrab from an 11-second video -- titled
'Dismantlement of a headquarters of
the Iranian terror regime" -- released by the IDF
yesterday showing plumes of smoke
after the bombing by US-Israeli forces.
The Iranian Supreme Leader and many other
top civilian andmilitary leaders are suspected
to have been killed in this attack. 
Source: X/IDF 

So, finally, what the US and Israel have wanted to achieve for close to 40 years has been accomplished.

The killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Saturday (28 Feb) morning occurred while US-Iran negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear programme were very much underway.

Just hours before the US and Israel launched the attack, the Omani Foreign Minister, Badr bin Hamad Albusaidi, -- one of the key mediators in the US-Iran talks -- had given broad indications in an interview with Margaret Brennan on CBS’s Face the Nation that Iran was coming around to accepting the demands of the US.

‘PEACE DEAL WITHIN REACH’

Watch the full interview here.

These are excerpts from what he said during the interview:

"In my assessment of the way the talks are going... I can see that the peace deal is within our reach." [00:41]

"If the ultimate objective is to ensure forever that Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb, I think we have cracked that problem through these negotiations by agreeing a very important breakthrough that has never been achieved any time before." [01:36]

"The single most important achievement, I believe, is the agreement that Iran will never, ever have a nuclear material that will create a bomb. This is, I think, a big achievement." [02:14]

"We are talking about zero stockpiling. And that is very, very important, because if you cannot stockpile material that is enriched then there is no way you can actually create a bomb, whether you enrich or don't enrich." [03:00]

"If there is a deal, an agreed deal, there will be full access (for UN inspectors)." [05:15]

"I'm not really in a position to go into the details of this, but the big picture is that a deal is in our hand, if we are only allowed the negotiators, and I believe both sides have been dead serious, very creative, very imaginative, to really reach where we have reached so far." [07:37]

"If we can agree tomorrow on this deal, and it can be agreed very fast, then there will be the access given to all the experts to go and assess what we have there. We will have the access diplomatically without having to go to war." [11:05]

"The big main issues, components, that really are the main areas of concern, I think that can be agreed tomorrow. The technicalities will take some time to work it out with the agency, the IAEA." [16:54]

Read the full text of the interview here.

MANY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

If a “peace deal” was so close to being achieved, as the Omani Foreign Minister indicated, then I wonder: why did the US and Israel launch the attack?

Is it because America feared that if the deal was finalised, Ali Khamenei would stay in power and the US and Israel would have to continue dealing with him? Perhaps the stated goal of regime change would not have been successful otherwise.

So, was it a deal that US the never really wanted? 

Or was the whole deal really not about the nuclear issue at all?

Or was the "peace deal within reach" only in the minds of the mediators and not really something that the US or Iran really believed in.

Only on Friday (a day before the launch of the war), Trump said he wasn't happy with the way the talks were going. And in Iran, a fews ago, the Supreme Leader had charted out a chain of command in case the worst happened.

So, it looks like the writing was very much on the wall. 

It was also surprising that the first wave of attacks happened on Saturday morning. Such strikes rarely occur in broad daylight. Was the timing intended to take the Iranian leadership by surprise?

WHAT IF THE WAR PROLONGS?

With the removal of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the general hope is that the war will end soon.

However, there is no sign of that happening yet. More than 24 hours after the death of the Supreme Leader, Iran is continuing to launch missiles at targets across the Middle East.

Dubai was a particularly surprising target, especially its civilian airport — the busiest in the world — along with a hotel and a mall. The airport has been closed since yesterday, and its impact is already being felt globally.

If Iran’s military capabilities have been dented considerably, how are they managing to hold out? Incidentally, both Russia and China have condemned the US attack and the killing of Ali Khamenei.

If Iran manages to overtly or covertly reinforce its arsenal and the war prolongs, the impact on global supply chains and their cascading effects will be unimaginably severe. 

Oil is once again centrestage. Nearly a quarter of the global oil supply passes through the narrow, 50-km wide Strait of Hormuz, which is under Iran’s control.

WHEN WILL IT ALL END?

The war will surely end one day. But I don’t see an immediate end to the hatred and animosity that both sides have harboured for decades, the very feelings at the root of everything we are seeing now in the Middle East. If anything, those flames have likely been fanned exponentially.

India AI Impact Summit: Goals and reality

The big news in India last week was the India AI Impact Summit 2026 held from 16 to 21 February in New  Delhi. Originally slated as a five-day affair, it was extended by a day in view of the rush of visitors. 

I am a tech enthusiast, especially when it comes to cutting-edge tools that actually touch the lives of ordinary people like us. So, I was keenly following the proceedings. There was live streaming on YouTube and maximim coverage in newspapers.

No doubt this was a blockbuster event that showcased India as the emerging force in the new Artificial Intelligence era.

BIG NAMES AND NUMBERS

There was a fair amount of hype and publicity, no doubt. That was natural considering around 100 nations participated and there were over 250,000 visitors. 

The summit was a "who’s who" of global power, featuring Heads of State or Government from France, the Netherlands, Swiss Confederation, Spain, Finland, Serbia, Estonia, Mauritius, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and UN Secretary-General, besides of course India’s Prime Minister who was the host.

Tech honchos were in full strength. Every big company was there: Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Accenture, IBM, KPMG, Zoom, Ericsson, OpenUK, Salesforce, World  Economic forum, HCL, Qualcomm, Razorpay,  Cisco, NVIDIA, Biocon Group, Coursera … you name it. Many companies were represented by multiple people.

INNOVATIONS AND INVESTMENTS

There were so many interesting exhibits. Here are a few of them. 

BharatGen -- India's first government-funded, sovereign, multilingual, and multimodal Large Language Model (LLM) initiative. 

Bhashini 2.0 -- Another government initiative, which focuses on building advanced, secure, and scalable multilingual applications for Indian languages.

Then there were the Kaze Smartglasses from Bengaluru-based Sarvam AI, which allow users to interact with the world through AI. 

The most interesting was an AI-powered air taxi. It is a collaboration between The ePlane Company and IIT Madras. This electric vertical take-off and landing (e-VTOL) craft promises to turn a one hour traffic crawl into an eight-minute flight.

There were a slew of announcements. Google announced setting up of an AI hub in Visakhapatnam, which will house gigawatt-scale computers and a new international subsea gateway. 

There were many similar announcements -- by other big companies like OpenAI, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Anthropic, etc. -- of either major tie-ups with Indian companies or opening of India offices.

All this will open up massive opportunities for the huge number of tech professionals in India. Investments running into billions, which have been committed, will also add to India’s IT infrastructure.

EXECUTION IS EVERYTHING

The summit painted a beautiful picture of the future, but it is important to remember that we aren’t there yet. As the old idiom goes, “There's many a slip between the cup and the lip.”

Here is why I am saying that:

In Bengaluru, we’ve been hearing about a "Common Mobility Card" for the metro and buses for over a decade. It’s a standard feature in many cities around the world. Yet here, despite our world-class tech prowess, it remains a "work in progress". 

National Common Mobility Card (NCMC) is a government of India initiative launched in 2019. In 2023, the Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation introduced the NCMC, but till today the authorities have not been able to make it available for the bus commuters!

It’s not a lack of technical skill; it’s definitely because of some "extraneous" reasons, I have no clue about. 

In the health sector, we have seen brilliant startups creating the technology for "portable" digital patient records. To be fair, there has been some progress. But the predominant reality on the ground is when you go to a different hospital or even the branch of the same hospital in another city, you start from scratch with a fresh set of expensive tests because the computer systems are not integrated. 

A third example is air taxi services between Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport and the two big tech hubs in the city (Electronics City and IT Park) which are around at least two hours by car from the airport. There have been multiple attempts on this front by different companies. Quite possibly because of lack of economic viability, they haven't really taken off.

In the apartment I live, though I have a high-speed wi-fi network which enables me to get connected to anywhere in the world, the mobile phone and internet connectivity is so poor that the cellphone works like our good old fixed line telephone. The calls can be made and received only from certain spots close to the balcony!

DOWNSIDE OF THE AI SUMMIT

The AI summit had its fair share of cringe moments that sort of served as a reality check. The most infamous was the Galgotias University "robodog" bungle. 

The university spokesperson claimed that a Chinese Unitree robot was an "in-house innovation". The ever-vigilant netizens called it out immediately, and it became a global embarrassment. 

This incident shifted the whole focus from AI to the quality of education in India, especially higher education. It led to discussions on how commercialised education in India has become, and how college managements try to go for hype and publicity rather than focus on actual learning by students. Many were just hoping that various college and university managements would learn a lesson from what happened to Galgotias University.

Then there was the widely publicised crashing of Wi-Fi at the summit, how food stalls accepted only cash payments, long queues to get to the venue, valuables being stolen, etc. There were also complaints of widespread traffic chaos, with vehicular movement being held up for a very long time for VIPs to pass. All these pointed to something that is quite familiar here: organisational mismanagement. 

India's Minister for Electronics and IT apologised, and it looks like from day 2, it was a better experience. 

JOURNEY HAS ONLY BEGUN

No doubt, the India AI Impact Summit was undeniably a success at many levels, especialy in terms of intent and investment. The conclave highlighted that India is no longer the world's backoffice. Science and technology has made tremendous progress making a whole lot of difference to people's quality of life.

But it has to be remembered at the same time that the true "impact" of this AI summit is not in the number of visitors or the big names who graced the occasion or the amount of investments promised.

Succeess will be measured by whether that air taxi not only actually takes flight over Bengaluru but also becomes a regular transport service; and whether an AI model can finally help a small-town doctor save a life.

We’ve seen the pathway to the future. Now, it's time to walk it and reach the destination.

India and Denmark: A tale of two very different postal systems

I was at the General Post Office (GPO) in Bengaluru yesterday to send a few picture postcards. Why I was sending postcards is a story for another blog post! 

There were quite a lot of customers there waiting to get various postal tasks done. Even at my local neighbourhood post office, often there are so many customers that I have to wait for at least 15 to 30 minutes just to reach the counter!

This crowd is quite remarkable considering we live in an era where most people prefer email or messaging apps to the physical letter.

END OF A 400-YEAR-OLD PRACTICE

No more letterboxes in Denmark
 - The Guardian/Liselotte Sabroe/EPA

While standing in that queue at the GPO, I was reminded of Denmark’s state-owned operator, PostNord, abolishing its 400-year-old postal delivery system for letters on 30 December 2025. It is the first and, so far, the only country to do so.

The reason? Obvious. A staggering drop in mail volume made the traditional "snail mail" economically unviable.

THE DIGITAL MAILBOX

I was curious to know how a society functions without a physical letterbox! After all, it wasn’t that no physical letters were being sent. Still, many official documents are sent physically rather than electronically. So, I did some quick research.

Denmark has been planning this transition for a long time, meticulously building a sophisticated digital replacement. Today, every Danish resident has a mandatory "Digital Post" mailbox linked directly to their national digital ID (MitID).

This isn't like our common email systems that are usually cluttered with spam and marketing. It is a secure, legally binding government portal. 

When a hospital, a tax authority, or a local municipality sends a notice to this box, it is legally considered "delivered" the moment it lands in the receiver’s inbox. It places the responsibility on the citizen to check their digital mail, just as we would check our physical gate for a letter. 

There are exceptions; if someone is too old or not electronically savvy, the documents are still physically sent to them. 

Any readers of this blog post from Denmark, or those familiar with this electronic model, may please let us know, in the comment section below, how well the system is working.

THE INDIAN CONTRAST

The General Post Office, Bengaluru.
Wikimedia Commons

Back here in India, the scenario is not very different when it comes to mail volume. Whenever I go to a post office, I notice that most of the people who are in the queue aren’t there waiting to buy inland letters, envelopes, or stamps like me.

India Post has totally repurposed the system, and today it has become a sort of banking behemoth!

Millions here rely on the post office for the Public Provident Fund (PPF), various savings certificates, and senior citizen schemes; all of them offer very good interest rates on deposits.

Also, while "ordinary" mail has died, Speed Post has boomed. That’s the preferred choice now for sending important documents. The article in transit can be tracked online.

(On 1 September 2025, India Post even did away with the nearly 50-year-old system of Registered Post, as most people were using the more efficient Speed Post system.)

THE HANDWRITTEN WORD

This is quite a fascinating study in evolution! While Denmark viewed the physical postal service as unviable and digitised the letterbox, India viewed its network as a vital infrastructure asset and repurposed it for financial inclusion and modern logistics.

This makes me wonder about the future of the handwritten word.

When was the very last time you sat down, wrote a physical letter, went to a post office, stuck a few stamps, and dropped it into that red pillar box?

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