Trump Repeats Claim He Prevented India-Pakistan Conflict From Turning Nuclear

US, July 09 : Former US President Donald Trump has once again asserted that he played a decisive role in preventing the recent India-Pakistan military confrontation from escalating into a nuclear crisis, renewing a claim that India has repeatedly rejected.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One at RAF Mildenhall in the United Kingdom on Wednesday (local time), Trump said the conflict between the two nuclear armed neighbours had reached a dangerous point and warned that the consequences could have been catastrophic.

“Think of it, India and Pakistan. That war was raging. They were a week into it. Eleven planes were shot down, and that war was going to go nuclear,” Trump said during the interaction, presenting the standoff as one of the major international crises he claims to have helped defuse.

Trump also repeated his earlier assertion that Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had personally acknowledged his role in halting the hostilities. According to Trump, Sharif told him that his intervention had saved between 30 million and 50 million lives. Trump went a step further, saying the number could have been even higher if the conflict had spiralled further.

“The Prime Minister of Pakistan said President Trump saved from 30 to 50 million lives. Well, guess what? Could have been a lot more than that,” he told reporters.

The former US president made the comments while responding to a separate question related to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. In the course of the exchange, Trump expanded on what he described as his broader record of settling global conflicts, claiming that he had been involved in resolving eight wars or major international standoffs.

“I settled eight wars,” Trump said, naming disputes involving Azerbaijan and Armenia, as well as tensions between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, among others. He also linked his foreign policy claims to his repeated complaint that he had not been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, arguing that his interventions had prevented bloodshed in multiple regions.

Referring to Machado, Trump said she had publicly suggested that he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize because of his role in helping stop conflicts. “I should have won that award more than anybody who ever received the Nobel Peace Prize because nobody settled wars. I settled eight of them because of a certain type of personality I was able to settle,” he said.

Trump’s latest remarks come just days after he made a similar claim in an interview with CNBC, where he argued that he had prevented a full-scale war between India and Pakistan by threatening both countries with steep trade penalties. In that interview, he claimed tariffs had become a tool of coercive diplomacy in his hands and that he used the threat of economic punishment to push both sides away from military confrontation.

“I stopped eight wars because of tariffs India, Pakistan… Five of the eight were stopped because of tariffs,” Trump had said in the interview. Elaborating further, he claimed he warned both governments that continued fighting would invite a 200 per cent tariff on their countries. “I said, if you keep fighting, I’m going to put a 200 per cent tariff on your country. Said the same thing to the other. I did it with India and with Pakistan,” he said.

The remarks are part of a pattern in which Trump has repeatedly projected himself as a key actor in preventing a wider South Asian conflict. However, his version of events stands in sharp contrast to India’s official position, which has consistently denied any role for US mediation in the de-escalation process.

The military confrontation between India and Pakistan was triggered by the April terror attack in Pahalgam, which left 26 people dead. The attack intensified tensions in the region and prompted a sharp response from New Delhi. In retaliation, India launched precision strikes on what it described as terrorist infrastructure across the border under ‘Operation Sindoor’, signalling a forceful response to cross-border militancy.

The strikes and the resulting military exchanges heightened fears of a broader conflict between the two neighbours, both of which possess nuclear weapons and have a long history of military confrontation. The situation drew global attention, with international observers closely watching whether the hostilities would remain limited or spiral into a wider war.

Despite Trump’s repeated insistence that he played a central role in calming the crisis, India has firmly rejected that account. New Delhi has maintained that the cessation of hostilities was worked out directly between the two sides through established military communication channels, particularly between the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs) of India and Pakistan.

Indian officials have underscored that there was no third-party mediation involved in the ceasefire understanding and that India’s long-standing position on Pakistan remains unchanged: all outstanding issues between the two countries must be addressed bilaterally. That position has been a cornerstone of India’s diplomatic approach for years, and New Delhi has shown little willingness to entertain suggestions of outside involvement in sensitive security matters with Pakistan.

The renewed remarks from Trump are therefore likely to attract attention not only because of their dramatic framing of the crisis as a near-nuclear event, but also because they once again place Washington at the centre of a diplomatic story India says was handled entirely on its own terms.

Trump’s comments also arrive in a politically charged context in the United States, where he has frequently highlighted his foreign policy credentials and cast himself as a dealmaker capable of ending wars through pressure, personal diplomacy and unpredictability. By invoking India and Pakistan alongside other conflict zones, he appears to be folding the South Asian crisis into a broader narrative about his ability to secure peace where conventional diplomacy fails.

For India, however, the issue goes beyond rhetoric. Any suggestion of foreign mediation in India-Pakistan matters touches a sensitive diplomatic nerve, especially when it concerns military confrontation and terrorism-linked escalation. That is why New Delhi has repeatedly moved to shut down such claims, reiterating that the understanding to stop hostilities emerged from direct bilateral contact and not external intervention.

As Trump continues to cite the India-Pakistan episode as evidence of his global conflict-resolution record, the divergence between his claims and India’s official account remains stark. While Trump portrays himself as the leader who pulled two nuclear powers back from the brink, India insists the de-escalation was a bilateral military decision taken without outside involvement.

The episode has thus become not only a matter of competing narratives over a dangerous regional confrontation, but also a reflection of how geopolitical events are repackaged in domestic political messaging. For Trump, it reinforces his image as a peace-broker. For India, it is another moment to restate a long-held diplomatic doctrine: no third-party role in India-Pakistan affairs, and no ambiguity over how the ceasefire was reached.