5 minPolitics
Rubio Announces Sweeping Financial Sanctions on International Criminal Court
The Trump administration has imposed financial sanctions on the International Criminal Court itself for the first time, freezing assets and barring U.S. transactions, while the court condemns the move as an assault on the rule of law.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Friday that the Trump administration is imposing sweeping financial sanctions on the International Criminal Court, marking the first time the United States has targeted the institution itself rather than individual officials. The move escalates a long-running campaign against the Netherlands-based tribunal, which the president has sought to dismantle throughout his second term.
To date, the administration has sanctioned 17 individuals with ties to the ICC, including judges and prosecutors. The new measures freeze any ICC assets subject to U.S. jurisdiction and generally bar Americans, U.S. businesses and banks from conducting transactions with the court. The sanctions do not take effect immediately: the Treasury Department has issued a 180-day general license allowing the court to maintain operations while it addresses American concerns.
In a pre-recorded video message released Friday morning, Rubio framed the action as a defense of U.S. sovereignty. «Our message is clear: The United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC,» he said. «Both parties agree on this, but only President Trump has the resolve to take the action needed to end this threat once and for all.»
The ICC responded sharply, condemning the sanctions as «an assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order.» The court noted that it was created by treaty and entrusted by 125 states parties with investigating and prosecuting genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. «It is an attempt to obstruct the course of justice and to prevent the Court from doing what it was created to do,» the ICC said in a statement.
ICC President Tomoko Akane, who was personally sanctioned by the Trump administration in August, said the court will continue to operate despite the new penalties.
Rubio argued that the ICC believes it has authority to prosecute American service members operating overseas and even U.S. Border Patrol agents. There is no evidence the court has sought to investigate or prosecute Border Patrol agents, though Rubio previously raised that possibility in July. The administration's concerns about U.S. personnel are not entirely hypothetical: in 2017, an ICC prosecutor sought authorization to investigate alleged war crimes by U.S. military and intelligence personnel in Afghanistan. ICC judges initially rejected the request, but that decision was overturned on appeal in 2020, allowing the investigation to proceed. The prosecutor later de-prioritized alleged crimes involving U.S. personnel to focus on the Taliban and ISIS-K.
A separate major grievance is the ICC's 2024 decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza during Israel's military response to the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. Both men have denied wrongdoing. In a February 2025 executive order authorizing sanctions against ICC officials, President Donald Trump called the warrants «baseless» and said the court overstepped its authority because Israel is not an ICC member. The ICC maintains it can exercise jurisdiction over nationals of non-member states when they are accused of qualifying crimes committed on the territory of a state that has accepted the court's jurisdiction.
The announcement came hours after this year's Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Navanethem «Navi» Pillay, a former ICC judge and U.N. human rights chief. Her selection drew immediate backlash from Jewish advocacy groups and U.N. watchdogs, who accused her of longstanding anti-Israel bias and defending antisemitic rhetoric. The Norwegian Nobel Committee honored Pillay, 85, for her contributions to international law and efforts to hold perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide accountable.
Rubio warned that the pressure campaign will continue unless the court changes course. «Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC,» he said. «And we expect our allies, many of whom are part of the ICC and that rely on American service members for their defense, to rein in this rogue court. If they do not, the United States will continue its campaign to dismantle the ICC piece by piece until Americans are threatened no longer.»
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