US President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed that the conflict between Pakistan and India in May ended “within five hours” after he threatened to scrap a trade deal during talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistani officials.

 

Speaking at a cabinet meeting, flanked by his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, President Trump recalled, “I said, ‘What’s going on with you and Pakistan’. The hatred was tremendous. This has been going on for a hell of a long time, like, sometimes with different names for hundreds of years.”

 

“I said, ‘I don’t want to make a trade deal with you’...I said, ‘call me back tomorrow.’ But we're not going to do any deals with you, or we're going to put tariffs on you that are so high, your head’s going to spin,” Trump added.

 

“Within about five hours, it was done...Now maybe it starts again. I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I'll stop it if it does. We can’t let these things happen.”

 

He reiterated that during the conflict between two nuclear-armed neighbours, “seven jets” were shot down. “I said that’s not good. That’s a lot of jets. Planes worth one hundred and fifty million dollars were shot down. Lot of…seven, maybe even more than that. They did not even report the real number,” he added.

 

President Trump’s latest statement appears to be in line with Pakistani claims of shooting down six Indian jets on the night of May 6-7, inflicting massive damage to the Indian Air Force (IAF). India has never explicitly revealed the number of lost jets, including Rafales, despite several media reports validating that Pakistan did successfully shoot down multiple jets. 

 

During a press conference on May 11, Indian Air Marshal AK Bharti, without disclosing the number of downed Rafales, admitted that “losses are part of combat,” implying irreparable damage to their air force.

 

Since the conflict between Islamabad and New Delhi, he has repeatedly claimed that he brokered a ceasefire on May 10, a claim acknowledged by Islamabad but denied by New Delhi.