Donald Trump may have been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, but the Republican candidate for president probably shouldn’t dust off a place on his mantle just yet.
Kristian Berg Harpviken, the director of the Peace Research Institute, which publishes an annual prediction of Peace Prize winners, told the Telegraph that he has been given a copy of a letter from a U.S. politician nominating Trump for the prestigious award.
“I have committed not to reveal the identity of the nominator, but what I can say is that the nominator has shared a copy of his nomination letter directly with me, that the nominator has a position which gives him the right to nominate, and that I consider it valid,” Harpviken said.
According to Harpviken, the letter praises Trump’s approach to foreign policy as “a threat weapon of deterrence against radical Islam, ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Isil], nuclear Iran and Communist China.”
However, Harpviken said that Trump winning the award is “entirely unlikely,” and that whoever submitted the letter most likely did so as a publicity stunt.
“The person who suggested it may genuinely mean it, but the person who suggested it may also realise that the very fact that Trump’s nomination gets confirmed has considerable interest in its own right, and that all publicity is good publicity,” he said.
Any person who meets the criteria may submit a nomination to the Nobel Committee, which keeps candidates’ names a secret for 50 years. Harpviken added that the person currently at the top of his shortlist is NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
“The argument, which I imagine is still that of President Obama, that [Snowden] is a traitor is increasingly unsustainable,” Mr Harpviken said. “It’s not as radical a proposition in 2016 as it would have been in 2014.”
Harpviken also said that U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, are on his list as well for their role in brokering the Iran nuclear deal.