Looking to bolster his legacy as a global peacemaker, Donald Trump has boasted often in recent days that he’s ended at least six wars. Critics of the president’s record say the truth is a lot more complicated.

Trump has made the assertion repeatedly in interviews, in conversations with foreign leaders and during press appearances, though the number often changes. It’s a claim he’s amplified as the Norwegian Nobel Committee prepares to announce this year’s recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize on Oct. 10 — an honor he’s long coveted.

“I’ve settled six wars and a lot of people say seven because there’s one that nobody knows about,” Trump told the commentator Mark Levin on Tuesday. On Friday, he told reporters, “I settled seven wars and actually if you think about pre-wars, add three more, so it would be 10.”

It’s not quite so clear cut. In one case — a clash between Cambodia and Thailand — the two sides credit Trump’s pressure for tamping down skirmishes on their border. Yet in others, the hostilities that Trump takes credit for resolving either were smaller in scale, his role and impact were limited, involved conflicts that continue or ended long ago.

And in another, a dispute between Ethiopia and Egypt over a dam on a Nile tributary has simmered for some time but never erupted in combat.

Nonetheless, Trump’s peacemaking bona fides have been laid down as established fact by his White House as he makes his case for the Nobel, something he once said he should have been awarded “four or five times.” He’s also railed against former President Barack Obama, who received the peace prize in 2009, his first year in office.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last month it was “well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

A White House official who was granted anonymity to discuss the issues said that Trump had solidified his role as a peacemaker by resolving conflicts around the world.

The president has cited other successes as he tries to bring an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, a conflict that he promised in last year’s presidential campaign to quickly resolve.

On Friday, Trump told reporters he thought the war in Ukraine “would have been in the middle of the pack in terms of difficulty, and it’s turning out to be the most difficult.”

Asked to identify the conflicts Trump brought to a close, the White House cited seven: India-Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo-Rwanda, Armenia-Azerbaijan, Cambodia-Thailand, Israel-Iran, Serbia-Kosovo, and Egypt-Ethiopia. The White House official said that the three “pre-wars” Trump referenced include conflicts that would have broken out had he not stepped in to keep peace through the Abraham Accords.

Trump deserves credit for intervening to mediate conflicts, said Aaron David Miller, a negotiator who worked for the State Department across five presidencies from Jimmy Carter’s to that of George W. Bush. Yet those achievements aren’t that much different from those of his predecessors, who did the same without seeking the attention or overstating their success, Miller said.

“In no case of the ones that Trump’s identified has he ended wars,” Miller added. “Defusing crises between these countries as they erupt? Yes, he’s played a hand in ameliorating some. It’s the over-claiming with the results that’s the problem.”

Several participants in the conflicts have themselves nominated Trump for the Nobel, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Visiting the White House in July, Netanyahu gave Trump a copy of a letter he’d submitted.

“It’s nominating you for the Peace Prize, which is well-deserved,” Netanyahu said. “And you should get it.”

In the case of India and Pakistan, Trump has repeatedly said that his administration ended the two adversaries’ four-day clash in May, asserting that trade deals were used as leverage.

But Trump’s version of events was rejected by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who told Trump in a telephone call that his country “does not and will never accept mediation,” according to an Indian account of the conversation. And despite Trump’s suggestion that the two nations were headed for nuclear war, India has said that they never came close.

Trump earlier this month hosted leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan at the White House to sign a joint peace declaration. But Azerbaijan essentially won the war between them in 2023. Trump did agree to guarantee their deal. In exchange, the nations nominated Trump for the Nobel Prize and named a transit corridor that will be created the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.”

“If we look at the specific outcomes, most of them are not final, and much of the progress had already been achieved through bilateral talks before the Trump administration’s mediation,” said Tigran Grigoryan, the director of the Regional Center for Democracy and Security in Yerevan, Armenia.

As for Congo and Rwanda, the two countries’ foreign ministers came to Washington in June and agreed to an American-supported deal but the conflict is far from peaceful or resolved. The Rwanda-backed M23 rebels still occupy a large part of eastern Congo, and the two sides missed a deadline for a peace accord on Monday.

Congo’s army on Tuesday accused the group of attacking its positions, while M23 has accused Congolese troops of violating a ceasefire.

On Friday, the U.S. convened an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss what U.S. representative Dorothy Shea called “an alarming increase in violence” in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

“The evolution of the security situation on the ground has not matched the progress achieved on the diplomatic front,” U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Africa Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, told the council. “The number of civilian casualties has risen dramatically.”

While Trump in his first term brokered an economic normalization between Serbia and Kosovo, it wasn’t a peace agreement, because their war ended in 1999. And Trump’s first-term team did mediate talks between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, but the dispute hasn’t been resolved. In any case, they haven’t fought a full-scale war since the 19th century.

“He thinks very short-term deals are solutions,” Jennifer Welsh, director of the Center for International Peace and Security Studies at McGill University in Montreal, said in an email. That’s not how wars end.”

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(With assistance from Sudhi Ranjan Sen, Diksha Madhok, Michael J. Kavanagh, Magdalena Del Valle and Ani Avetisyan.)

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