Trump administration hits International Criminal Court with severe sanctions

ATHENS, Greece — The Trump administration announced Friday that it was imposing severe financial sanctions on the International Criminal Court, its latest effort to cripple the global body that seeks to prosecute those accused of war crimes, genocide, and other murderous criminal acts.

The new sanctions, unveiled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the State Department, would prohibit transactions with the court after a grace period of six months. Any companies doing business with the court afterward could be subject to punishment by the U.S. government.

The threat of that could constrain the institution’s ability to carry out daily operations.

Although the State Department had been preparing the sanctions for months, Rubio’s announcement came just hours after a committee in Norway said it was awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a South African lawyer who served for nine years as a judge on the ICC and worked as the top human rights official at the United Nations.

The sanctions are an intensification of the Trump administration’s push to undermine the court. In February 2025, just weeks after taking office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing agencies to come up with sanctions to impose on the court.

At the time, he said the court was trying to violate American sovereignty and undermine “the critical national security and foreign policy work of the United States government and our allies, including Israel.”

Rubio said in a statement Friday that Trump would never allow the court to prosecute Americans. “We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate,” he said.

Rubio announced in July that the United States planned to “systematically disable” the court, which Trump has long described as a threat to Americans.

The administration has imposed financial sanctions and visa bans on court judges and prosecutors, but the measures announced Friday are broader.

The ICC said in a statement that the American move was “an assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order, which strikes at the simple principle that no one stands above the law.”

Many companies that have business ties with the court will be granted licenses over the next 180 days to continue their work without financial punishments, the State Department said.

During that period, the Trump administration will assess whether its concerns regarding the ICC have been addressed, the department said in a statement. The administration can then adjust the licenses based on that.

The Treasury Department is helping to enact the sanctions and maintains a list of entities punished with financial restrictions.

Of nearly 200 nations in the world, 125 have signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and are subject to its rulings. The United States never ratified the treaty establishing the institution, and both it and Israel are among those that are not bound by the statute.

However, given the number of countries that are members of the court — including close U.S. allies — the prosecution of U.S. citizens could put those people at risk of arrest and extradition in many parts of the world, in theory. But experts often say that the chances of foreign officials taking those actions are low.

Rubio announced the sanctions the day after he returned from a three-nation tour of Europe during which he was trying to strengthen alliances. The three countries he visited — Iceland, Greece, and Portugal — are all members of the ICC.

The court, officially established in 2002 and based at the Hague in the Netherlands, has a mission to investigate and prosecute genocide, war crimes, and other serious offenses. The Trump administration has in the past pushed back on the court’s ability to look into the conduct of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and has also been highly critical of the court’s actions against Israel.

In November 2024, the court issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, and Yoav Gallant, the defense minister for much of Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip. Prosecutors had investigated the officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity in operations in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed and some have starved to death. Israel carried out airstrikes and ground operations after the deadly Hamas attacks in Israel in October 2023.

The Trump administration has already sanctioned many of the court’s judges. Rubio has suggested that even more sweeping punishments were necessary because of the possibility that the court could prosecute U.S. citizens, and U.S. service members in particular.

Such actions would “mean the death of the U.S. as a sovereign and independent nation,” Rubio wrote in an opinion essay published in the Wall Street Journal this summer.

Defenders of the court often point out that it has no police force of its own, and would be able to arrest and try U.S. citizens only if member states carry out arrests.

The Trump administration is not the first to take on the ICC: Under George W. Bush, the United States also pushed back on the court’s ability to go after Americans.

Yet the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the institution — “brick by brick, if necessary,” according to Rubio — is an escalation, from skepticism and rhetoric to outright dismemberment.

“This is incredibly disturbing,” said James A. Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative legal organization, calling the sanctions a “calculated attack” on international justice.

Whether the American attack on the ICC will cripple the institution will depend in part on how its member nations respond, he said, and whether they stand by the institution.

“We know that the court has been preparing for this much-rumored eventuality,” he said. “We’ll have to see.”

The European Union’s executive arm, whose 27 member countries are also members of the court, said in a statement that “the EU will work closely with the ICC to ensure it continues to operate effectively” and called the American move “deeply regrettable.”

The EU statement emphasized that the six-month delay leaves “room for dialogue.” Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and Britain also released a joint statement in defense of the court Friday.

The court was already in a state of turmoil. Karim Khan, the institution’s chief prosecutor, was removed earlier this year after an investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed a subordinate. Khan has denied the accusations.

In a recent interview with the New York Times that was conducted before the latest sanctions were announced, Tomoko Akane, president of the court, said that the institution has been taking “measures to strengthen its resilience” in the face of the Trump administration’s threats.

“A permanent body like the ICC must never be shut down,” she said. “The stakes extend far beyond the court itself.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.