Washington: US President Donald Trump on Wednesday once again claimed he helped avert a potential nuclear clash between India and Pakistan in May.
Addressing a cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump said he had spoken with a “very terrific” Prime Minister Narendra Modi and warned New Delhi and Islamabad that continued hostilities would trigger tariffs “so high” and jeopardise trade deals.
Trump’s latest comments come as his administration’s 50% tariffs on Indian imports — an initial 25 percent duty and an additional 25 percent penalty,” over New Delhi’s energy ties with Russia take effect today. India has termed the move as “unjustified and unreasonable”.
“I’m talking to a very terrific man, Modi of India. I said, What’s going on with you and Pakistan? Then I spoke to Pakistan about trade. I said, What’s going on with you and India? This has been going on for a hell of a long time, sometimes under different names for hundreds of years,” the US President said during the cabinet meeting.
“But I said, what’s going on?… I said, no, no, I don’t want to make a trade deal with you. You’re going to have a nuclear war. You guys are going to end up in a nuclear war. And that was very important to them. I said, call me back tomorrow, but we’re not going to do any deals with you, or we’re going to put tariffs on you that are so high. I don’t give a damn. Your head’s going to spin. You’re not going to end up in a war,” he added.
“Within about five hours, it was done. It was done. Now maybe it starts again, I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I’ll stop it if it does. We can’t let these things happen,” Trump said.
Trump also repeated his claim that seven fighter jets or more were shot down during the hostilities, saying, “I saw they were fighting, then I saw seven jets were shot down. I said, ‘That’s not good.’ That’s a lot of jets. You know, the USD 150 million planes were shot down. A lot of them. Seven, maybe more than that. They didn’t even report the real number.”
The US President had earlier put the number at five and said he used trade pressure to halt the escalation.
“I have stopped all of these wars. A big one would have been India and Pakistan…” he said during a bilateral meeting with the President of the Republic of Korea on Monday (US local time).
He added, “The war with India and Pakistan was the next level that was going to be a nuclear war… They already shot down 7 jets – that was raging. I said, ‘You want to trade? We are not doing any trade or anything with you if you keep fighting, you’ve got 24 hours to settle it’. They said, ‘Well, there’s no more war going on.’ I used that on numerous occasions. I used trade and whatever I had to use…”
Trump has referred to the India-Pakistan conflict several times before.
In July, he made a similar claim, saying India and Pakistan were close to a nuclear conflict after the Pahalgam terror attack that left 26 people dead and that he intervened at a crucial time to de-escalate.
“We have stopped wars between India and Pakistan. They were probably going to end up in a nuclear war. They shot down five planes in the last attack. It was back and forth, back and forth. I called them and I said no more trade if you do this. They are both powerful nuclear nations. Who knows where that would have ended up, and I stopped it…” Trump said.
His remarks came a day after the White House credited his intervention with helping secure a “ceasefire” between India and Pakistan following Operation Sindoor, which targeted terror camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Jammu and Kashmir on May 7.
India has consistently denied any third-party involvement in the de-escalation, asserting that it was Pakistan’s Director General of Military Operations who reached out to his Indian counterpart on May 10, leading to a ceasefire agreed upon directly between the two sides.
