While U.S. President Donald Trump again took credit for preventing a full-scale war between India and Pakistan, the Indian National Congress on Wednesday (July 22, 2025) attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his long silence over the issue, blaming him for being more concerned about going abroad and breaking democratic institutions.
On Tuesday (July 23, 2025), President Trump said that his intervention had successfully averted a full-fledged military war between India and Pakistan and stated that five planes were destroyed during the clashes. He also hinted that the rapidly growing tensions were on the cusp of causing a nuclear confrontation.
"There was a very serious back-and-forth, five planes crashed. I said to them, 'No more trade. You take it the way it's going, and it's not going to be good.' They're both nuclear powers and who knows where that would have led to. And I put a stop to it," Trump stated at an event at the White House.
Congress communications in-charge general secretary Jairam Ramesh condemned the Modi government for not resolving the issue in Parliament, particularly the ongoing Operation Pahalgam-Sindoor controversy. "As the Modi Government goes on with its non-cooperation to provide concrete dates for debating Pahalgam-Sindoor in Parliament and as the Modi government goes on with non-cooperation to agree to a PM reply in the debate, President Trump reaches the silver jubilee, the quarter century milestone on his claims," Ramesh tweeted on X.
"He has made 25 such trumpet sounds in the past 73 days but the Indian Prime Minister is completely silent – managing time only to go abroad and to unsettle democratic institutions back home," he said.
President Trump also claimed that America was accountable for stopping other international conflicts, such as the fights between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, and between Kosovo and Serbia. He further claimed that his administration had dismantled all of Iran's nuclear capabilities.
Trump initially announced on May 10 that India and Pakistan had established a ceasefire following a volatile night of negotiations, which he claimed were brokered by the United States. Since then, he has made the assertion on several occasions, now announcing publicly for the first time that five planes were shot down during the fighting.
"You had India, Pakistan, that was going on in fact, planes were getting shot out of the air, five, five, four or five. But I think five jets got shot down actually, that was getting worse and worse, wasn't it? That was looking like it was going to go, these are two serious nuclear nations and they were colliding with one another," he told Republican senators last Friday at a White House dinner.
In spite of repeated claims made by Trump, the Indian government has always asserted that the ceasefire agreement with Pakistan was the result of direct military-level talks between both countries' Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs) and that there was no mediation involved.
In fact, Prime Minister Modi apparently made it clear in a 35-minute phone call with Trump last month that India does not and never will accept third-party mediation. Modi insisted, according to sources, that the de-escalation talks were begun by Pakistan and were held directly between military commanders.
The current series of hostilities started following the Pahalgam terror attack on May 6 in which 26 civilians were killed. India responded with Operation Sindoor on May 7, targeting terror camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The battle witnessed four days of furious drone and missile exchange before both sides decided on May 10 to put an end to the conflict.
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