Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief, and Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, are the best candidates because they convened the process that ended with the easing of sanctions against Tehran in return for nuclear restrictions, according to Henrik Urdal, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), which makes a shortlist each year with mixed results.

“The threat of the use of nuclear-arm force is more real than it has been, with North Korea being in play as well,” Urdal said to reporters last week in Oslo. “It’s important to support initiatives that prevent the development and proliferation of nuclear arms.”

Leaving John Kerry out was no criticism of the former US secretary of state’s role in the deal, the PRIO director said, but could be a way of highlighting to Trump -- who has said he’s made a decision on whether the US will continue to abide by the deal -- that it has broad international support.

US Secretary of State John Kerry (left) meets with Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on April 22, 2016 in New York. (Agence France -Presse/Bryan R. Smith)

Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, won the award in his first year in office in 2009. The current US president has also been nominated this time, according to PRIO. Nominations, which include over 200 names every year, are open to academics, lawmakers and non-governmental agencies worldwide. Trump’s odds were 101/1 at William Hill, which estimated Obama’s chance of winning again to be higher, at 20/1.

PRIO’s shortlist also included the White Helmets, formally called the Syrian Civil Defense, and its leader Raed al Saleh, for its efforts to help civilians in the war-torn country. The White Helmets were 4/1 to win the prize at both William Hill and Unibet. The main bookmakers didn’t provide odds for the Iran-deal parties, or for PRIO’s second and third picks: 

Members of the Syrian civil defence volunteers, also known as the White Helmets, sit by as colleagues bury their fellow comrades during a funeral in Sarmin, a jihadist-held town nine kilometres east of Syria's northwestern city of Idlib on Aug. 12, 2017, after seven were shot dead early in the morning during a raid on their base, according to the organisation. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the seven volunteers had all been killed by bullets to the head. (Agence France -Presse/Omar Haj Kadour)

UNHCR and High Commissioner Filippo Grandi, amid a record number of displaced people globally and crises spanning from Syria and Afghanistan to the Rohingyas in Myanmar

Turkey’s Cumhuriyet newspaper and its former editor Can Dundar, who symbolize president Recept Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown on the freedom of the press

Pope Francis was favorite to win at William Hill with 2/1, followed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel at 3.5/1. The American Civil Liberties Union had the lowest odds at Unibet with 3/1, followed by the Pope at 4/1. Other candidates cited by PRIO, Nobel historian Asle Sveen, or bookmakers:

The Economic Community of West African States

Saudi writer Raif Badawi

US leaker Edward Snowden

Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper, human rights group Memorial

The prize, along with literature, physics and medicine honors, was created by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel and first awarded in 1901. Past winners also include civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., the late Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo and Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos, last year’s recipient. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, based in Oslo, selects the peace prize recipient.

The Physiology or Medicine Prize was on Monday awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young for discoveries that explain how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronized with the earth’s revolutions. Prizes in chemistry, physics and literature will be awarded this week in Stockholm while the economics prize will be handed next Monday. The peace prize winner will be announced on Friday at 11 a.m.