US President Donald Trump has attacked the Nobel Peace Prize committee for not receiving the 2026 award.

Navi Pillay, the South African former UN human rights chief, was awarded the prize this year for being “instrumental in ensuring war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted,” according to Nobel committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes.

Trump has long coveted the prize and made no secret of his aspiration to win it. He has previously pressured the committee to give him the prestigious accolade.

Speaking at a rally in Syracuse, New York, on Friday, the US president said, “I know a lot a people; I’ve never heard of this person.”

Pillay previously chaired the UN commission that concluded Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.

“The United States of America, represented by me as your president, should have received the Nobel Peace Prize, but didn’t. And this is an indelible stain on the country of Norway, and those people that made such a disgraceful and embarrassing decision,” Trump said.

He continued his criticism, declaring that “the Nobel Peace Prize has been forever discredited by a handful of radical ideologues who are anti-democracy and really enemies of civilization.” Trump added, “We will not forget, Norway, that you didn’t give this prize.”

At the Nuremberg court, where Pillay was attending an academic and legal conference, she addressed attendees and made a joke at Trump’s expense.

Walking into a room of applause, she said: “If you clap a little bit more, I may share this prize with Trump.”

The White House also reacted furiously to Trump’s snub last year and accused the committee of placing “politics over peace” when the prize was awarded to Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Trump also listed wars he claimed to have resolved, including some that remain unsettled, before saying he was preparing to resolve or win two more: the war on Iran and the war in Ukraine. He said both would be brought to an end quickly.

“Iran will be very quick one way or the other: that they give us everything or they don’t exist any longer,” Trump said.

The remarks come at a time when the United States has failed to achieve its objectives against Iran through either military or economic pressure, while rising fuel prices have added to global economic concerns and intensified criticism of Washington’s policies.

With the US approaching midterm elections, Trump also faces mounting political pressure, as the possibility of Republicans losing control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate threatens to further weaken his administration’s position at home.