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In his address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Donald Trump said “everyone” is saying he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for ending seven wars.
“I have ended seven unendable wars,” Trump said Sept. 23 in New York. “They said they were unendable. You’re never going to get them solved. Some were going for 31 years. … I ended seven wars, and in all cases, they were raging, with countless thousands of people being killed.”
Trump has repeated a version of this claim for months. In his U.N. speech, Trump listed the conflicts: Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan.
PolitiFact previously rated a similar statement Trump made about ending “six” wars Mostly False. That was before a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The talking point he used at the U.N. remains misleading.
Trump played a role in a number of peace deals that have recently eased conflicts between some of these countries, sometimes using the threat of tariffs or military action. But many of the agreements are temporary, fragile, or have yet to be implemented. In some cases, leaders dispute that Trump played a deescalatory role. In others, there’s little evidence that a potential war was brewing. Fighting continues between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, and Cambodia and Thailand.
“Brokering an agreement is a first and important step in ending wars, but it is also just the start of a process that needs follow-through,” said Ken Schultz, a Stanford University political scientist who studies international conflict and conflict resolution. “The Armenia-Azerbaijan accord still needs to be implemented. India and Pakistan have had many ceasefires in their decades-long conflict. It will take time, and a commitment to follow through by the United States, before we know if history will see these deals as having ended wars.”
The White House did not respond to a request for evidence.
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Cambodia and Thailand
After U.S.-backed talks, Cambodia and Thailand paused military attacks, but there have been violent clashes since the July 28 agreement of a ceasefire.
On July 28, Cambodia and Thailand agreed to a ceasefire after a territorial dispute escalated into an armed conflict July 24, killing dozens and displacing more than 300,000 people. 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, and both countries agreed not to deploy more troops to the contested border. Experts questioned how long the deal will last, because 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.
They may already have their answer, as both sides have traded accusations of ceasefire violations amid flaring tensions.
On Sept. 17, a crowd of 200 Cambodians crossed into Thai territory to protest and dismantle new security barriers along the disputed border. Thai police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd, injuring dozens of Cambodians. Thailand’s military said a number of its members were injured.
Thai military leaders later voted to indefinitely close the border with Cambodia and said they would impose Thai laws on Cambodian citizens living in villages along the disputed area, prompting more protests.
Kosovo and Serbia
Accounts vary about whether these two countries were headed toward war. Trump says they were, and that he helped head it off. Kosovo backed up Trump’s account; Serbia denied it had any war plans.
On June 27, Trump said Serbia and Kosovo were on the verge of war. “Serbia was … 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 without providing more details.
Relations in the region remain unsettled. On Sept. 12, Trump’s administration suspended a strategic dialogue with Kosovo, citing unspecified actions and statements by officials from a caretaker government that’s been in office for seven months amid a political crisis, according to the Atlantic Council.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, center, stands with Rwanda’s Foreign Minister, Olivier Nduhungirehe, left, and Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Foreign Minister, Therese Kayikwamba Wagner, right, after signing a peace agreement at the State Department on June 27, 2025. (AP)
The Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda
Violence in the region has continued after Trump brokered a deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.
On June 27, the foreign ministers of Rwanda and Congo signed a U.S.-brokered peace agreement in Washington, D.C., in an attempt to end their deadly conflict that has lasted almost three decades. Trump called the moment “a glorious triumph for the cause of peace.” The agreement also allows for U.S. investment in eastern Congo’s critical mineral reserves, including gold, copper and lithium.
The deal is part of an effort to stop violence in the eastern part of Congo, where the militia group M23 occupies large swaths of territory. Countries, including the U.S., have accused Rwanda of backing the militia, which Rwanda has denied.
Foreign policy experts cautioned the early summer agreement was significant but part of a long string of broken agreements between the two countries, including a long-term ceasefire agreement reached in mid 2024 that collapsed months later.
Despite the Trump-era agreement, violence in the region has continued. CNN reported Sept. 22 that militia groups in the region continue to be trained and are still fighting. In one province, an aid worker told CNN that fighting is “going on every day” and people are still being displaced.
A Sept. 5 U.N. Human Right Office report detailed violations and human rights abuses committed by the groups in 2025. The report said that a deadly massacre, allegedly by M23 and Rwandan soldiers, took place weeks after the late June agreement signing.
“In July, M23 members, together with alleged soldiers of the RDF (Rwandan Defense Force) and civilians armed with machetes, massacred hundreds of people — mainly Hutus — in four villages in Rutshuru. This is one of the deadliest incidents recorded since the M23’s resurgence in 2022,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk told the Human Rights Council on Sept. 9. Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit group, reported on the violence in late August, counting 140 civilian deaths.
Other reports have said the number of people killed in the conflict since July may exceed 300.
“During the period of July 9 to 21, at least 319 civilians — including forty-eight women and nineteen children — were killed by the rebels, who are still thought to be backed by members of the Rwanda Defense Force,” Charles A. Ray, chair of the Africa program at the foreign policy research institute, and former U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia and Zimbabwe, wrote Aug. 28.
Pakistan and India
The two countries ended a period of tit-for-tat military strikes in May, though Trump’s role is in dispute.
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.”
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 didn’t mention the U.S.
On July 28, India Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said the country “halted its operation because all the political and military objectives studied before and during the conflict had been fully achieved. To suggest that the operation was called off under pressure is baseless and entirely incorrect.”
On July 30, India External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar also rejected third-party mediation in the ceasefire, and said no foreign leader asked India to halt its military operations.
Israel and Iran
Long-running hostilities between the two countries erupted into military action earlier this year.
Israel launched attacks on Iranian military and nuclear facilities June 13 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 the U.S. bombing Iran’s heavily reinforced facilities at Fordo, where its uranium enrichment facility is buried deep underground. Just over a week after Israel first attacked, Trump authorized the U.S. military to bomb three Iranian nuclear sites, including Fordo.
Israel and Iran agreed to a ceasefire June 24 mediated by the U.S. and Qatar. Trump announced the deal on Truth Social on June 23.
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.
A longer-term accord does not seem likely soon.
Iran approved a law in early July to end cooperation with the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected new direct nuclear talks with the U.S. in September.
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps released a Sept. 21 statement saying that any hostile action, particularly by the U.S. or Israel, against Iran’s national interests or territory will produce a “decisive, crushing, and timely response.”
A view of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in Benishangul-Gumuz, Ethiopia on Sept. 9, 2025. (AP)
Egypt and Ethiopia
The Egypt-Ethiopia conflict is a longstanding diplomatic issue that stems from a water dispute. Egypt and Sudan say an Ethiopian-constructed Nile River dam could rob them of their share of water. The disagreement doesn’t seem to be over.
Ethiopia completed its $4 billion hydroelectric dam in July, capping a 14-year construction project.
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.
Trump weighed in a few weeks later. “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 at a July 14 White House meeting. “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 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, referring to his first-term effort to end the conflict.
Raising the stakes, Egypt has moved to arm Somalia — which has been unhappy with Ethiopian moves to use a port in the breakaway region of Somaliland — as well as deploying troops there.
Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, speaks during a trilateral signing ceremony with President Donald Trump, right, and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, not pictured, at the White House on Aug. 8, 2025. (AP)
Armenia and Azerbaijan
With Trump’s involvement, this long-running conflict has produced a peace agreement, though it needs to be finalized, and it remains to be seen whether it brings stability.
The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan joined Trump at the White House on Aug. 8 to sign a joint peace declaration after nearly 40 years of conflict, including Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed region in the area claimed by both countries. The deal is not a final peace agreement, but represents a move in that direction, foreign policy experts said.
“What paved the way for a deal was the military victories by Azerbaijan, mass displacement of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, and Armenia’s abandonment by Russia,” said Schultz, of Stanford University. “These events created an opportunity for a deal, and Trump helped broker the actual agreement. This is no small matter, and he deserves credit for helping, but the hard choices were made by the leaders of the states themselves.”
Trump also got something out of it. The country’s leaders approved a plan for a new road-and-rail connection linking Azerbaijan with Nakhichevan, an Azerbaijani exclave bordered by Armenia, Iran, and Turkey, Foreign Affairs reported. Armenia has given development rights to the corridor across its territory to an American company while maintaining control of the passage, which is to be named the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.”
Both Armenia and Azerbaijan say the ball is in the other’s court, according to the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit that researches global crises. Armenia says it’s ready to sign the deal and Azerbaijan says Armenia must remove its claims to Azerbaijani territory from its constitution, which could be rejected by Armenian voters.
Our ruling
Trump said he “ended seven unendable wars” around the world. This is exaggerated.
Trump had a hand in ceasefires that have recently eased conflicts between Israel and Iran, India and Pakistan, and Armenia and Azerbaijan. But these were mostly incremental accords without a certainty of long-term peace, and some leaders have disputed the extent of Trump’s role.
The U.S. was involved in forging a temporary peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, but violence in the region has continued, with hundreds of civilians estimated to have been killed since the deal’s signing. Trump also helped broker a deal between Cambodia and Thailand but both sides have accused the other of ceasefire violations that have led to violent skirmishes.
A long-running standoff between Egypt and Ethiopia over an Ethiopian dam on the Nile remains unresolved. In the case of Kosovo and Serbia, there is little evidence a potential war was brewing.
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