Pakistan backs Trump for Nobel Peace Prize he's long craved

Subhadip Sircar, Bloomberg News on Jun 21, 2025

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Pakistan said it will nominate U.S. President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, a move that may annoy rival India while building stronger ties to Washington.

The recommendation is being made for Trump’s “decisive intervention and pivotal leadership during the recent India-Pakistan crisis,” according to a social media post on Saturday by Pakistan’s government.

Trump’s “robust diplomatic engagement with both Islamabad and New Delhi” served to de-escalate “a rapidly deteriorating situation, ultimately securing a ceasefire and averting a broader conflict,” according to a separate statement from Pakistan’s embassy in the U.S.

The move will likely irritate Indian officials, who were caught off guard when Trump announced the ceasefire in a conflict that erupted in April following a terrorist attack in Kashmir. India blamed the attack on Pakistan, which rejected the accusation, and the two sides’ militaries skirmished in the aftermath.

Pakistan officials celebrated Trump’s announcement, while officials in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government seethed. India has refuted Trump’s claims that U.S. mediation or the prospects of a trade deal helped defuse tensions with Pakistan. Modi rebutted many of those claims directly in a call with Trump this week.

But in saying it would nominate Trump — who met Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir this week — Islamabad signaled it understands how to assuage the famously mercurial president.

Trump has long grated about the fact that his first-term predecessor, Barack Obama, won the Nobel Prize in 2009 — a controversial decision that came before Obama surged U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, Trump has repeatedly said over the years that it’s an accolade he, too, deserves.

‘10 seconds’

During a speech last year, Trump said that “If I were named Obama, I would have had the Nobel Prize given to me in 10 seconds.”

The American leader was back at it late Friday, issuing a lengthy post saying he merited the award — which recipients typically don’t lobby for — for easing tensions between Serbia and Kosovo, keeping the peace between Egypt and Ethiopia and getting some Middle East countries to establish relations with Israel.

Then he said it didn’t necessarily matter if he actually won the prize, because “the people know and that’s all that matters to me!”