New Delhi: US president Donald Trump has repeated – for the 24th time by some accounts – the claim that his invocation of trade led to the ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May this year. This time, though, Trump introduced a new line, about “five jets” having been shot down.Trump said on July 18 that the India-Pakistan war was among the wars that he had stopped:“We stopped a lot of wars. And these were serious, India and Pakistan, that was going on. Planes were being shot out of the air [some reports have this portion as ‘out of there’]. Five, five, four or five, but I think five jets were shot down actually. These are two serious nuclear countries, and they were hitting each other.”Pakistan had claimed that it downed five Indian planes in air-to-air combat after India launched Operation Sindoor, targeting terror bases in response to the Pahalgam terror attack which killed 26 civilians in April.This is the first time a top foreign leader has officially claimed that fighter jets were shot during the conflict. Even though Trump didn’t mention the country which suffered the losses, his description of the jets being “shot out of the air” seemingly points to the losses suffered by the Indian Air Force on the night of May 7.If true, this would be the biggest loss suffered by the IAF since the 1971 war with Pakistan.The US President’s public statement gains significance due to the lack of any formal information on this issue of public importance from the Modi government. Neither PM Narendra Modi nor any Union minister has told the country about the losses suffered by the IAF on the first night of the military operations.There have been four instances where statements from senior Indian officials have accepted the losses suffered that night, without mentioning the scale of losses. These include India’s Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan, Director General of Air Operations Air Marshal A.K. Bharti, Defence Attaché to Indonesia Captain (IN) Shiv Kumar, and the Defence Secretary R.K. Singh.In its latest issue, The Economist reported that “foreign military officials believe that five Indian aircraft were destroyed, including at least one Rafale”. It said that even Indian military officials now believe that “the losses may have stemmed from Indian errors rather than technological deficiencies”.Trump also claimed that the US has “totally knocked out” Iran’s nuclear capabilities in its strikes in June – which is a claim that has earlier been seriously questioned, including by American media. He said:“You know, it seems like a new form of warfare. You saw it recently when you looked at what we did in Iran, where we knocked out their nuclear capability, totally knocked out that…”Trump then repeated the ‘trade’ line .But India and Pakistan were going at it, and they were back and forth, and it was getting bigger and bigger, and we got it solved through trade. We said, you guys want to make a trade deal. We’re not making a trade deal if you’re going to be throwing around weapons, and maybe nuclear weapons, both very powerful nuclear states.”India has opposed Trump’s claims that the ceasefire was a result of his threats to stop trade talks.Prime Minister Narendra Modi also told Trump over a phone call that India had never, “at any level”, discussed a trade deal or third-party mediation with the US.This, however, has not stopped Trump from repeating the claim.Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has noted in a post on X that this is his 24th time repeating the ‘trade’ line. “The Prime Minister, who has had years of friendship and huglomacy with President Trump going back to Howdy Modi in Sept 2019 and Namaste Trump in Feb 2020, has to now himself make a clear and categorical statement in Parliament on what President Trump has been claiming over the past 70 days,” Ramesh wrote.Later in the day, leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, wrote on X that the country has the right to know the “truth about the five jets.”