Pakistan flip flops on Trump Nobel Peace Prize nomination after less than 24 hours
Pakistan condemned President Donald Trump for bombing Iranian nuclear facilities, less than 24 hours after saying he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for defusing a recent crisis with India.
The Pakistani government on Saturday credited the "decisive diplomatic intervention" and "pivotal leadership" of Trump in brokering a truce with India, after a massacre of tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir in April,. The nuclear-armed rivals stepped closer to war in the weeks that followed, attacking each other until intense diplomatic efforts, led by the U.S., resulted in a truce.
The next day, however, it condemned the U.S. for attacking Iran, saying the strikes "constituted a serious violation of international law" and the statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in a phone call Sunday with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, expressed his concern that the bombings had targeted facilities that were under the safeguards of the IAEA, the Associated Press reported. Pakistan has close ties with Iran and supports its attacks on Israel, saying it has the right to self-defense.
Mushahid Hussain, a former chair of the Senate Defense Committee in Pakistan's parliament, suggested to Reuters last week that Pakistan benefited from currying favor with Trump.
"Trump is good for Pakistan," he told Reuters. "If this panders to Trump's ego, so be it. All the European leaders have been sucking up to him big time."
There was no immediate comment on Monday from Islamabad about the Trump Nobel recommendation, which also followed a high-profile White House lunch meeting between the president and Pakistan's powerful army chief, Asim Munir.
Thursday's meeting, which lasted more than two hours, was also attended by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, the U.S. Special Representative for Middle Eastern Affairs.
According to a Pakistani military statement, a detailed exchange of views took place on the "prevailing tensions between Iran and Israel, with both leaders emphasizing the importance of the resolution of the conflict."
Trump, meanwhile, was supposed to meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G-7 summit in Canada. Trump returned to Washington early for a Situation Room meeting on the Israel-Iran war.
A week before Trump announced the U.S. strikes on three key Iranian nuclear facilities, the president said in a social media post that Israel and Iran should and will make a deal, "just like I got India and Pakistan to make, in that case by using TRADE with the United States to bring reason, cohesion, and sanity into the talks with two excellent leaders who were able to quickly make a decision and STOP!"
An Israeli official previously made the distinction to Fox News Digital, however, that the goal of the Ayatollah and the Muslim Brotherhood is not trade with the United States, but rather the "destruction" of America and Israel. The same official advocated for a regime change in Iran – something Trump said is not the objective of the United States.
Trump on Friday had lamented on TRUTH Social that he would not get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the war between India and Pakistan, the war between Serbia and Kosovo or for "keeping Peace between Egypt and Ethiopia."
"No, I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that's all that matters to me!" Trump said.
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