US President Donald Trump has once again claimed that he stopped a war between India and Pakistan during the first year of his second term, asserting that the two nuclear-armed neighbours were on the verge of a nuclear conflict and that his intervention saved “millions of lives,” a claim that India has consistently rejected.
Speaking at a 105-minute news conference at the White House on Tuesday to mark one year of his return to office, Trump said he had ended “eight unendable wars in 10 months”, including what he described as a near-war between India and Pakistan.
“These were unendable wars — Cambodia and Thailand fighting for years, Kosovo and Serbia, the Congo and Rwanda. Pakistan and India, they were really going at it. Eight planes shot down. They were going to go nuclear in my opinion,” Trump said.
Trump claimed that Pakistan’s prime minister, who visited Washington last year, told him that “President Trump saved 10 million people, and maybe much more than that”, adding that India and Pakistan are both nuclear powers.
He repeated the claim later in the briefing, saying that ending the India-Pakistan conflict alone may have prevented the deaths of “10, 15, 20 million people, or more”.
“If you look at any one of those wars, you’re talking about millions of people. You multiply it eight times. But when you look at India and Pakistan, that could have been 10, 15, 20 million people. It could have been more than that. So I saved millions of people,” Trump said, responding to a question on how winning the Nobel Peace Prize would have improved the lives of ordinary Americans.
The claims were reinforced in an official White House statement titled ‘365 WINS IN 365 DAYS: President Trump’s Return Marks New Era of Success, Prosperity’, which listed “Brokered peace between India and Pakistan” under a section on “Reasserting American leadership on the world stage”.
The statement said Trump had delivered “the most accomplished first year of any presidential term in modern history”, citing peace deals ending multiple wars, record energy production, reshored investments, bureaucracy cuts, negative net migration for the first time in 50 years, and the largest drop in homicides on record.
Trump has now claimed nearly 90 times that he halted hostilities between India and Pakistan, beginning on May 10 last year when he announced on social media that the two countries had agreed to a “full and immediate” ceasefire after a “long night” of talks mediated by Washington.
India has consistently denied any third-party intervention, maintaining that all issues with Pakistan are strictly bilateral and that no external mediation took place.
During the news conference, Trump also said he should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ending several conflicts, including between Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan. He lashed out at Norway, which hosts the Nobel Peace Prize committee, alleging it exercises control over who receives the award.
“Don’t let anyone tell you that Norway doesn’t control the shots. It’s in Norway. Norway controls the shots,” Trump said, adding that the country had “lost such prestige”.
“I settled eight wars. No president’s probably ever settled one. I did eight,” he said, claiming that leaders of all the countries involved had sent “strong recommendations” nominating him for the prize.
Trump also referred to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, whom he praised after she presented her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to him at the White House last week. He said Machado believed that Trump, not her, “deserved” the honour for ending multiple conflicts.
Stating that he was still trying to resolve the Russia-Ukraine war, Trump said his motivation was not awards but saving lives.
“I didn’t do it for a Nobel Prize. I did it because I’m saving a lot of lives,” he said.
(With inputs from PTI)
