President Donald Trump and his supporters have coined a new nickname for him: the “peacemaker-in-chief.”
The White House recently touted several peace deals and ceasefires, some temporary, as feathers in Trump’s cap. The administration says the president cooled hostilities by leveraging both the U.S. military and economic pressure. His supporters argue his actions are worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, something Trump has sought for years.
“I’ve stopped six wars — I’m averaging about a war a month,” Trump said July 28 in Turnberry, Scotland.
He has repeated a version of the line about 10 times.
Trump and his team cite his diplomacy between Israel and Iran; the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda; Cambodia and Thailand; India and Pakistan; Serbia and Kosovo; and Egypt and Ethiopia. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said Trump had “direct involvement in these conflicts, leveraging tools from America’s military might to our superior consumer market.”
Missing from his list is the Russia-Ukraine war, which he pledged to end within 24 hours of taking office, and the Israel-Hamas war.
Foreign policy experts said Trump deserves some credit for recent peace agreements in several conflicts. They cited conflicts between Cambodia and Thailand, Israel and Iran, and India and Pakistan, although India disputes Trump’s involvement.
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But “the others strike me as major exaggerations or very premature,” Michael O’Hanlon, Brookings Institution director of research and foreign policy senior fellow, said. “But it’s still not a bad record, especially if someday he can add Ukraine to the list, while avoiding war in East Asia as well.”
The peace agreement between Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda is temporary and shaky. With Egypt and Ethiopia, there is no deal on the table. With Kosovo and Serbia, there’s little evidence he was significantly involved or that a major conflict was emerging.
India and Pakistan: U.S. influence is disputed
India and Pakistan’s leaders agreed to a ceasefire May 10 after days of military strikes between the two nuclear-armed countries. The conflict centered around the territorial dispute over Kashmir, a region in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent. India controls the central and southern portions and Pakistan controls the northern and western parts. The countries have fought over the territory since 1947.
Trump said the deal was reached after a “long night” of talks mediated by the U.S. Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif thanked Trump for his “leadership and proactive role.”
But Indian leaders disputed that Trump’s intervention factored into the ceasefire.
Hours after Trump took credit for the agreement, India Foreign Secretary Shri Vikram Misri announced May 10 that Pakistan’s director general of military operations had initiated a call with his Indian counterpart and both sides agreed to “stop all firing and military action on land and in the air and sea.” He did not mention the United States.
On July 30, India External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar rejected third-party mediation in the ceasefire, and said no foreign leader asked India to halt its military operations.
Israel and Iran: Ended with US bunker-busting bomb
On June 13, Israel launched surprise attacks on Iranian military and nuclear facilities that killed prominent politicians, military leaders and nuclear scientists. Iran responded with waves of missile and drone strikes against Israeli cities and military sites.
Israel’s goal of eliminating Iran’s nuclear capabilities led to U.S. involvement since it required bombing Iran’s heavily reinforced facilities at Fordo, where its uranium enrichment facility is buried deep underground. Trump authorized the U.S. military to bomb three Iranian nuclear sites, including Fordo, on June 21.
On June 24, Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire mediated by the U.S. and Qatar. Trump announced the deal on Truth Social on June 23: “It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE.”
Experts said it’s difficult to know how much influence Trump had in the talks but said his decision to bomb Iran likely ended the conflict more quickly.
The Israelis would have carried out their own attack targeting the facility if the U.S. had not, said Michael Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank. An Israeli attack “would not have been as quick or as definitive,” Levitt said.
The Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda: Trump-brokered deal follows broken deals
On June 27, the foreign ministers of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo signed a U.S.-brokered peace agreement in Washington, D.C., to end their deadly, nearly 30-year conflict. Trump called the moment “a glorious triumph for the cause of peace” in an Oval Office event. The agreement also allows for U.S. investment in eastern DRC’s critical mineral reserves, including gold, copper and lithium.
The deal is an effort to stop violence in the eastern part of the DRC, where the militia group M23 occupies large swaths of territory. Countries including the United States have accused Rwanda of backing the militia, which Rwanda has consistently denied. The conflict has recently caused thousands of deaths, and about 6 million deaths have been attributed to it over the last 30 years, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Foreign policy experts said the agreement is significant but part of a long string of broken agreements between the countries.
“Over the past year and a half, high-level mediators from the United States, Angola, Kenya, Qatar, Togo and the African Union, among others, have brought the parties back to the negotiating table time and again,” Cecily Brewer, senior expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a nonprofit funded by Congress that promotes conflict resolution and prevention, said in a July 3 report.
As tension between DRC and Rwanda intensified in 2023, the U.S. renewed its efforts to broker peace and the countries eventually committed to de-escalate. In mid-2024, the parties agreed to a long-term ceasefire before it collapsed in December 2024, and M23 rampaged through eastern DRC.
Brewer said long-term peace can only be achieved if the U.S. and other mediators provide consistent monitoring and tangible consequences.
Kosovo and Serbia: Little evidence Trump thwarted an escalation
On June 27, Trump said Serbia and Kosovo were on the verge of war.
“Serbia was — they were getting ready to go to war with a group. I won’t even mention, because it didn’t happen, we were able to stop it,” Trump said at an Oval Office press conference. “But I have a friend in Serbia, and they said, ‘we’re going to go to war again.’ And I won’t mention that it’s Kosovo, but it’s Kosovo. But they were going to have a big time war, and we stopped it. We stopped it because of trade. They want to trade with the United States and I said we don’t trade with people that go to war.”
Trump has continued to say he stopped a new conflict between the countries without providing more details. Kosovo backed up Trump’s account, but Serbia denied it had war plans.
On July 10, Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani said Trump recently had prevented a potential escalation “from Serbia” on Kosovo’s border. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said July 12 that Serbia has “not engaged any soldiers, we have not moved any machinery, it does not even occur to us … regarding Vjosa Osmani, that we are supposedly preparing for conflicts.”
Outside of the leaders’ comments, we did not find evidence of an impending escalation, or that Trump helped snuff it out.
Egypt and Ethiopia: No solution on the table over Nile dam dispute
The conflict started over a water dispute. Egypt and Sudan say an Ethiopian-constructed Nile River dam could rob them of their share of water.
The $4 billion hydroelectric Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam began construction in 2011 and is near completion. Trump, who failed to broker a deal between the countries during his first term, promised again to work on a solution.
Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty announced June 29 that talks with Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam have officially stalled, according to Egyptian Streets. “After 12 years of talks, the negotiations have yielded no concrete outcomes,” Abdelatty said.
Trump decided to weigh in a few weeks later at a July 14 White House meeting.
“I think if I’m Egypt, I want to have water in the Nile and we’re working on that one, probably, but it’s going to get solved,” he said.. “It’s a very important source of income and life, it’s the life of Egypt, and to take that away is pretty incredible. But we think we are going to have that solved very quickly.”
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, a Trump ally, praised Trump’s comment July 16, saying it “demonstrates the seriousness of the United States — under President Trump’s leadership — in exerting efforts to resolve conflicts and end wars.”
But Ethiopian officials and experts said his remarks risked aggravating the fragile situation and undermining Ethiopia’s right to utilize its natural resources. A similar incident occurred in 2020 when Trump said the dam could be “blown up” by Egypt when Ethiopia didn’t make a deal with the downstream nations. “I had a deal done for them, and then unfortunately, Ethiopia broke the deal which it should not have done,” Trump said.
“President Trump held grudges against Ethiopia for not adhering to his self-styled mediation efforts between Ethiopia and Egypt eight years ago during his first presidency,” Fekahmed Negash, former executive director at the Eastern Nile Technical Regional Office of the Nile Basin Initiative, told The Reporter, an Ethiopian newspaper, July 19. “The Egyptians got the better of him to take a stand that Ethiopia should sign a binding treaty with Egypt and Sudan regarding the GERD.” He said Ethiopia cannot sign such a deal.
Cambodia and Thailand: U.S.-backed talks result in temporary ceasefire
On July 28, Cambodia and Thailand agreed to a ceasefire after a territorial dispute escalated into an armed conflict July 24, killing dozens of people and displacing more than 300,000. It marked the deadliest conflict between the two nations in more than a decade.
On July 26, Trump said he was speaking with both countries’ leaders and that the U.S. would not negotiate trade deals with either country unless the fighting stopped.
U.S.-backed talks began July 28, the same day the ceasefire was announced. Trump said he instructed his team to restart trade negotiations. Both countries agreed not to deploy more troops to their contested border. Experts have questioned how long the deal will hold since it didn’t address the underlying dispute about which country can lay claim to 1,000-year-old Hindu temples along the 500-mile border.
Officials were scheduled to meet Aug. 4 to discuss how to maintain the ceasefire.
Our ruling
Trump said he has “stopped six wars” since he took office in late January.
There’s a lot of uncertainty around Trump’s role in these conflicts.
Experts said he deserves some credit for deals that eased conflicts between Cambodia and Thailand, Israel and Iran, and India and Pakistan, although some leaders dispute his role.
The U.S. was involved in a temporary peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda that experts said is significant but shaky. In a conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia, there is no solution on the table. And with Kosovo and Serbia, there is little evidence a potential war was brewing.
Trump’s statement contains an element of truth but it ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.