US President Donald Trump on Tuesday yet again doubled down on his claim that he brokered a truce between India and Pakistan earlier this year in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor, but this time cited Pakistan Army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir’s supposed words as proof.
“The prime minister of Pakistan (Shehbaz Sharif) was here along with the field marshal (Munir), who’s a very important guy in Pakistan. He was here (White House) a few days ago. And he said to a group of people, ‘This man (Trump) saved millions of lives because he saved (stopped) the war from going on,'” the US President told a gatherinhg in Quantico.
“That war was going to get very bad. I was very honoured. I love the way he said it. Susie Wiles [White House Chief of Staff] was there. She said that was the most beautiful thing. But we saved a lot of them,” Trump added.
India, however, has consistently pushed back against the US President’s claims of mediating between the two nuclear powers, with New Delhi maintaining that a truce was reached via direct talks between the Directors General of Military Operations of the two nations.
Trump’s latest claim about stopping a full-scale nuclear war between India and Pakistan comes a day after his announcement of the Gaza peace plan, and at a time when the US President is eyeing a Nobel Peace Prize.
Trump’s aspirations for a Nobel Peace Prize are driven by his self-proclaimed role in ‘stopping’ seven wars since taking office in January this year, a claim he has reiterated several times.
Last week, while addressing the United Nations General Assembly, Trump doubled down on his peacemaking role, claiming that he had ended “seven wars in seven months”.
“They said they were unendable, some were going for 31 years, one was 36 years. I ended seven wars and in all cases they were raging with countless thousands of people being killed,” the US President told the Assembly, adding that he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize “for each one of them”.
That said, Trump perhaps suspects that his chances are slim. On Tuesday, when he made the claim about stopping the India-Pakistan conflict, the US President said that it would be an “insult” to the US if he was not awarded the Nobel.
“Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing,” the 79-year-old said, adding, “It’d be a big insult to our country, I will tell you that. I don’t want it, I want the country to get it.”
Thus far, only four US Presidents have been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and most recently Barack Obama in 2009.
With this year’s Nobel Prize winners slated to be announced on October 10, it remains to be seen whether Trump becomes the fifth.
