In 2025, US President Donald Trump lobbied hard for the Nobel Peace Prize, repeatedly emphasizing that he had stopped eight wars and that no candidate was more deserving than him.
Trump’s campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize was even endorsed by multiple world leaders, including Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Cambodia Hun Manet, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, President of Gabon Brice Oligui Nguema, and numerous other leaders.
However, one of the most forceful endorsements came from the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif, who nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize on multiple platforms and said that Trump’s intervention in the India-Pakistan War in May 2025 helped avert a nuclear crisis and saved millions of lives.
However, when Trump failed to win the prize despite multiple endorsements, something snapped inside him. In October 2025, the Nobel Committee announced that Venezuela’s María Corina Machado was the winner of the coveted award.
After the announcement, Trump told reporters: “The person who actually got the Nobel Prize called today, called me and said, ‘I’m accepting this in honor of you, because you really deserved it.’”
Trump avoided expressing his disappointment directly, but in January this year, he could no longer hold back.
Trump tied his demand for Greenland to not getting the Nobel Peace Prize.
In a message to Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Trump blamed the country for not giving him the prize.
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America,” Trump wrote.
Many dismissed Trump’s message to Jonas as hyperbole or outbursts of a sore loser. However, subsequent events have shown that not getting the Nobel Peace Prize has deeply scarred Trump’s impressionable mind (pun intended).
Since then, Trump has gone to war with two countries, first with Venezuela and then with Iran.
Trump got away with the Venezuela War, winding up the operation in less than three hours with no casualties; however, the war with Iran, as security experts had been warning for months, stretched for more than a month, spread to the whole Middle East, and caused widespread economic turmoil throughout the world.
A fragile ceasefire has been worked out, though the chances of long-term peace remain slim. Furthermore, energy prices could remain elevated for years, and the world might be standing at the doorstep of an impending food crisis.
Worse still, no one bought into Trump’s logic of war. NATO countries abandoned Trump. One by one, many NATO countries, among them Spain, France, and Italy, refused the use of their military bases for offensive operations against Iran; the UK, Japan, and South Korea refused to join the US’s war effort, and Trump’s domestic approval ratings plunged to a historic low, with over 60% Amercians strongly disapproving of his decisions.
Experts said that for Iran, it was a ‘war of survival,’ for Israel, it was a ‘war of choice,’ but for Trump, it was a ‘war of whims.’
After this disastrous war, clearly, Trump has sabotaged his chances of winning a Nobel, at least for the foreseeable future.
However, that does not mean Trump has abandoned his desire to have another Nobel medal, at least the physical medal, even if he does not officially win the award.
In January 2026, President Donald Trump accepted the physical Nobel Peace Prize medal from Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado during a White House meeting. Machado presented the medal to Trump as a gesture of gratitude for his support of Venezuelan democracy.
Trump described it as a “wonderful gesture of mutual respect” and said he intended to keep the medal, adding that “nobody in history deserves the prize more than him”.
Now, following Pakistan’s mediation in the Iran-US War, there are murmurs that Islamabad’s efforts towards mediation and achieving a ceasefire deal should be rewarded with a Nobel Prize.
Pakistani media and Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) on April 3 called for the country’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to initiate a two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran.
In an opinion piece for The Nation, Lt. Col (Retd) Sayed Ahmad Nadeem Qadri said: “Pakistan’s recent actions align with these principles in several ways: it prevented a potentially devastating war, acted as a trusted intermediary for both sides (the USA and Iran), contributed to global stability by helping stabilise energy routes and international markets, and encouraged diplomacy over military action, resulting in the promotion of dialogue.”
“Such contributions reflect the core spirit of the Nobel Peace Prize, rewarding those who actively work to reduce conflict and foster peace. Pakistan’s mediation between the United States and Iran demonstrates the power of diplomacy in resolving even the most complex conflicts,” he added.
In fact, Trump could return the favor to Pakistan PM Sharif by nominating or endorsing him for the Nobel Peace Prize, just like Sharif endorsed Trump for the award multiple times last year.
If Sharif manages to win the award, Trump could be sure that, just like Machoda last year, Sharif would gladly gift his Nobel medal to Trump, calling him the more deserving candidate.
It is worth recalling that last year, Sharif repeatedly credited Trump with the ceasefire between India and Pakistan, even though New Delhi firmly rejected all reports of US mediation, saying that India agreed to the ceasefire after the Pakistani DGMO reached out to India with a ceasefire proposal.
Since then, Islamabad has signed a crypto deal with Washington and a critical minerals deal, and the US has greenlit a crucial IMF bailout package for Islamabad, which was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Given Islamabad’s critical dependence on the US and PM Sharif’s eagerness to cross all boundaries of sycophancy to appease Trump, he could be sure that Sharif would be more than willing to issue a statement similar to Machoda’s, saying he is receiving the award in honor of President Trump.
In fact, Sharif would be more than willing to read a statement drafted in the White House itself.
We have just witnessed a short trailer of Pakistan and its Prime Minister, Sharif’s subservience to Trump.
On April 4, the New York Times reported that the text of Sharif’s ceasefire announcement posted on the social media platform X was vetted by the White House.
“Sharif, adopting Trumpian parlance, said in a post on X Tuesday afternoon that diplomacy was “progressing steadily, strongly and powerfully” and that he was requesting that Mr. Trump extend the deadline for two weeks. He then tagged Mr. Trump and other top advisers. But behind the scenes, the White House had already seen and signed off on the statement before Mr. Sharif posted it,” the NYT reported.
Some people even speculated that the message was not only vetted but written by the White House, as Sharif initially posted the statement with the header: “*Draft – Pakistan’s PM Message on X*”.
Given this bonhomie, Trump can be sure that Sharif will have no hesitation in reading out a statement written by the White House if he manages to win the Nobel for its mediation efforts and would gladly gift the physical medal to Trump in front of the cameras.
President Trump, then, can boast of becoming the first person ever to have not one but two Nobel medals, without winning even a single one, a fitting tribute to Trump’s remarkable efforts towards world peace.
- Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
- THIS IS AN OPINION ARTICLE. VIEWS PERSONAL OF THE AUTHOR
- He can be reached at ahlawat.sumit85 (at) gmail.com
