Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: In the ongoing Nobel Prize season, US President Donald Trump, who failed to win one in 2025, is at it again!
Making a last-minute pitch for the Nobel, he claimed he reiterated nth time that he settled 8 wars and insisted he is not bragging. He has repeatedly claimed that his diplomatic efforts deserve the award, according to media reports.
In fact, in June 2025, he believed his record already justified multiple Nobel Peace Prizes. “I should have gotten it four or five times,” he said.
Trump said he had done “far more” regardless of whether he received the Nobel Peace Prize, arguing that denying him the award would be a “great discredit” to the Nobel Committee itself!
When all of his efforts failed, his acolyte and Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado gifted her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize medal to Trump during a meeting at the White House on January 15, 2026.
Hinting that his peace-making efforts were not over, Trump said on Wednesday that another conflict could soon be added to his list, even as there has been little visible progress towards another ceasefire with Iran.
Multiple efforts
Over the years, he has made countless appeals for the Nobel. Last year, he also got endorsements from a few leaders, including Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
This time, he did it from the White House itself while pointing out his record of settling 8 wars and hinting that another breakthrough could be on the way.
“I’ve done stuff that nobody else has ever done. I’m not bragging, I’m just telling you the facts,” he told reporters on Wednesday after returning to Washington from campaign appearances across the country. “No president has probably ever settled any wars. I settled 8 wars.”
The remarks were hardly a new Nobel pitch from Trump. While he has repeatedly argued that his diplomatic record makes him deserving of the multiple Nobel Peace Prizes, his claims about the number of wars he has ended have been challenged by fact-checkers, who noted that several of the conflicts he cites were not formally wars and that the US role varied considerably from one dispute to another.
In fact, he claimed credit to end the ‘India-Pakistan war’—Operation Sindoor—in 2025—nearly 100 times.
Old ambition
Since 1900, when the Nobel awards started, four US Presidents have won the Prize: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama. Trump has been trying to somehow sneak into this coveted list.
During his first presidency (2017-21), he repeatedly drew attention to his diplomatic efforts involving North Korea. In 2018, two Norwegian politicians said they had nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize following his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
A year later, Trump said Japan’s then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had nominated him for the Prize because of his efforts to ease tensions with North Korea. However, Abe did not publicly confirm the nomination.
He continued to press his Nobel case during his 2020 re-election campaign, fervently insisting that he deserved the honour and contrasting his treatment with that of former President Barack Obama, who won the prize in 2009.
The subject returned with renewed force during Trump’s second term. In February 2025, while meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, Trump openly complained about his slim chances of receiving the award.
“They will never give me a Nobel Peace Prize. It’s too bad. I deserve it, but they will never give it to me.”
“4 or 5 times”
Much of Trump’s Nobel pitch rests on his self-proclaimed role in resolving conflicts.
He has repeatedly cited the US role in helping reduce tensions or reach agreements involving India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran, Cambodia and Thailand, Serbia and Kosovo, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan.
In June 2025, Trump said he believed his record already justified multiple Nobel Peace Prizes.
He added that he was not making the claim “out of scorn” and pointed to Obama, who, he said, received the Prize despite ‘doing nothing.’
He also pointed to the Abraham Accords, the agreements brokered during his first administration that normalised relations between Israel and some Arab states, as another reason he believes he deserves the award.
But his claims have drawn direct rebuttals. India virtually rejected his assertion that the US helped broker the India-Pakistan ceasefire. The Ministry of External Affairs said there was “no third-party intervention” during Operation Sindoor in mid-2025 and that the understanding to stop military action was reached directly between the militaries of India and Pakistan.
That has not stopped Trump from repeatedly returning to the argument.
Support
He has not relied only on his own claims of being worthy of the prize. His allies and some foreign leaders have also backed his candidacy. Republican Representative Claudia Tenney nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize for the third time in January 2026. She cited his role in the Abraham Accords and what she described as his efforts to settle multiple international conflicts.
The leaders of Israel, Pakistan and Cambodia also nominated Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize.
However, there is an important distinction between publicly announced nominations and the official Nobel process.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee does not publicly confirm individual nominations. Under Nobel rules, information about nominees is kept secret for 50 years. The committee said 287 candidates were under consideration for the 2026 Peace Prize, including 208 individuals and 79 organisations.
Being nominated also does not mean that a candidate has been endorsed by the committee or is among the finalists.
Dispute with Norway
By January 2026, Trump’s frustration over the elusive prize had spilled into a dispute with Norway over his push to take control of Greenland, He sent a message to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store complaining that Norway had not awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize for what he described as stopping eight wars.
Because Norway had not given him the Prize, he no longer felt obliged to “think purely of Peace.”
Store clarified later that the Norwegian government does not decide who receives the Nobel Peace Prize. The award is selected by the independent Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Taking another unexpected turn, Trump’s Nobel pursuit crossed paths with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado’s 2025 Peace Prize win. Machado, who was awarded the prize for her work in promoting democratic rights in Venezuela, later met Trump at the White House. During the meeting, she handed him her Nobel medal, giving Trump a tangible connection to an award he has repeatedly said he deserved.
The gesture drew fresh attention to Trump’s long-running Nobel campaign. But while Machado could give Trump her medal as a personal gesture, the Nobel Peace Prize itself remained hers. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has made clear that the award cannot be transferred, shared or revoked.
Iran war
Trump’s latest Nobel push also comes at a complicated moment for his foreign policy.
While he has presented himself as a peacemaker and repeatedly highlighted the conflicts he says he helped settle, his administration remains involved in a major confrontation with Iran. Experts believed Trump was unlikely to receive the Prize in 2026, particularly given the ongoing conflict with Iran. The winner is due to be announced on Friday.
However, that does not appear to have discouraged Trump from making his case.