US President Donald Trump has once again attempted to take credit for ending the India-Pakistan conflict, this time inflating his earlier claims about the scale of the fighting. After previously saying that five jets were shot down, Trump has now asserted that seven aircraft were destroyed during the four-day confrontation between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
Speaking at the White House during a bilateral meeting with the President of the Republic of Korea, Trump claimed that he personally halted what he described as a “raging" war between India and Pakistan by threatening to cut off trade.
“I have stopped all of these wars. A big one would have been India and Pakistan… 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 claimed.
The latest remark contradicts his own statement from July, when he put the figure at five downed aircraft. Notably, he has never clarified which side supposedly lost the jets.
Trump has repeatedly made such claims of mediating in the conflict, despite New Delhi firmly rejecting them. India has consistently made it clear that there was never any conversation with Trump, or with US Vice President JD Vance, about using trade as leverage to halt Operation Sindoor.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself stated during the parliamentary debate on Operation Sindoor that “no world leader asked India to stop Operation Sindoor."
Indian Air Force Chief Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh has also provided a clear and verifiable account of the operation, undercutting Trump’s version. Singh revealed that India had downed at least five Pakistani fighter aircraft along with a large surveillance plane.
“We have at least five fighters confirmed kills and one large aircraft, which could be either an ELINT (Electronic Intelligence) aircraft or an AEW&C (Airborne Early Warning and Control) aircraft, which was taken on at a distance of about 300 kilometres. This is actually the largest ever recorded surface-to-air kill that we can talk about," he said earlier this month.
He further detailed the extensive strikes India carried out during the operation. “We were able to get at least two command and control centres, like Murid and Chaklala. At least six radars, some of them big, some of them small. Two SAGW systems that is in Lahore and Okara. We attacked three hangars. One was the Sukkur UAV hangar, the Bholari hangar and the Jacobabad F-16 hangar. We have an indication of at least one AEW&C in that AEW&C hangar and a few F-16s, which were under maintenance there," the officer said.
Trump’s repeated attempts to exaggerate his role in defusing the conflict stand in stark contrast to India’s official account and underline a pattern of self-congratulatory claims that have little basis in fact.
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