Trump doubles down on India-Pak ‘nuclear war’ claim, says PM Sharif warned 35 million would have died

In a dramatic escalation of his earlier assertions, US President Donald Trump has claimed that Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told him as many as 35 million people would have perished in India’s Operation Sindoor had he not intervened to halt a “nuclear war” between the two neighbors.

Speaking during his first State of the Union address of his second term, Trump reiterated that he had “ended eight wars” within his first 10 months in office. Among them, he again listed India and Pakistan — asserting that the conflict could have spiraled into a catastrophic nuclear exchange.

“In my first 10 months, I ended eight wars... Pakistan and India would have had a nuclear war. Thirty-five million people, said the Prime Minister of Pakistan, would have died if it were not for my involvement,” Trump said, offering no additional details about the purported intervention.

The claim marks the first time Trump has publicly attributed the staggering casualty estimate directly to Sharif.

A sweeping claim, little new evidence

Alongside India and Pakistan, Trump said he had helped resolve conflicts involving Israel and Hamas, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, Serbia and Kosovo, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Cambodia and Thailand.

However, New Delhi has repeatedly and firmly rejected Trump’s assertions that Washington played any mediatory role in defusing tensions with Islamabad.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had earlier brushed aside questions about Trump’s involvement, remarking pointedly that the United States “was in the United States” during the four-day conflict.

India has consistently maintained that there was no third-party mediation. According to New Delhi, it was Pakistan’s Director General of Military Operations who initiated contact with his Indian counterpart via the military hotline, leading to what Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri described as a “ceasefire understanding”.

Operation Sindoor and its aftermath

The flare-up followed the April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam that killed 26 tourists. In response, India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7 last year, targeting infrastructure linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

While Trump’s remarks sought to frame Washington as the decisive force preventing nuclear devastation, his latest claim has also put Islamabad in an awkward spot.

It was Pakistan that had nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize last year, crediting his “diplomatic intervention” for helping end the hostilities. Now, with Trump attributing an apocalyptic warning directly to Sharif, the narrative risks amplifying questions about Pakistan’s own assessment of the crisis — and who truly stepped back from the brink.