Trump says tariff threat stopped India-Pakistan war during Operation Sindoor
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- Trump said at Camp David he threatened India and Pakistan with 250% tariffs if they continued fighting during Operation Sindoor, claiming both countries called within a day to say they would not go to war.
- Trump asserted 11 planes were shot down during the conflict — a figure disputed by New Delhi.
- Trump repeated his broader claim that he has stopped eight wars during his presidency and added that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war.
- Trump said Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif told him he had saved 50 million lives by halting the conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
- India has consistently maintained the May 10, 2024 ceasefire followed direct DGMO-to-DGMO military contact with Pakistan, rejecting any role for third-party mediation or US tariff pressure.
- Operation Sindoor was launched by India on May 7 last year to strike terror infrastructure in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir after the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, and was paused on May 10 following Pakistan's request.
Why it matters: The unresolved dispute over who ended Operation Sindoor — Trump claiming credit via tariff pressure versus India insisting on bilateral DGMO contact — has diplomatic weight: it complicates US-India coordination on counterterrorism and trade, and Trump's '11 planes' claim, if broadcast without pushback, could aggravate nuclear-armed neighbors that India insists settled the pause among themselves.
