U.S. sanctions International Criminal Court, vowing to dismantle it “brick by brick” without changes

The Trump administration imposed fresh sanctions targeting the International Criminal Court on Friday, taking action against the court itself after previously penalizing more than a dozen of its judges and prosecutors.

“Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement announcing the measures. 

The move came just hours after the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced it was awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, a South African-born human rights official who served as an ICC judge from 2003 to 2008. Pillay also led a U.N. inquiry that determined last year that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Israel strongly disputed the report’s findings.

Neither the United States nor Israel is a party to the Rome Statute that established the ICC. Washington has long objected to the court’s investigation of alleged war crimes by U.S. personnel in Afghanistan and its arrest warrants for Israeli leaders over alleged crimes in Gaza.  

The court maintains it can prosecute crimes committed on territory under its jurisdiction, even when the accused is a national of a country that has not joined. 

Rubio has previously described the ICC as a “fatally politicized supranational court” that has “maliciously abused its authority.” He vowed Friday to dismantle it “brick by brick” if necessary. 

Under the designation, the court’s assets under U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and U.S. companies and individuals are generally barred from doing business with the court. For now, the Treasury Department is allowing some services to continue and giving the court 180 days to maintain certain operations while its member countries address Washington’s objections. 

“We have structured this action to provide an opportunity for States Parties to negotiate and present a solution to address our concerns,” Rubio said. “If these efforts do not bear fruit, we will continue to adjust accordingly.” 

The ICC condemned the designation as an attempt to interfere with its work and intimidate those who cooperate with it, calling it “an assault on the rule of law.” 

“The Court will continue to fully discharge its mandate, with independence and impartiality,” ICC President Tomoko Akane said. The court also appealed to its 125 member states to help ensure it has adequate resources to continue operating, warning its future now depends in part on the governments that established it. 

The court’s member states include most U.S. allies in Europe, including every NATO member besides Turkey, as well as Canada, Japan and Australia. 

The foreign ministers of Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and the U.K. said in a statement later Friday that they “regret and strongly disagree with the announcement of sanctions to be imposed upon the Court by the United States.”

“[I]f put into effect, these sanctions will have a significant impact on the Court’s work, its dedicated staff and their families,” the countries said. “They work every day to bring those accused of the most serious international crimes to justice and to support their victims.”

Pillay, the Peace Prize recipient, left the court in 2008 to become the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and currently serves on the International Court of Justice, which is separate from the ICC. 

She was also the chair of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In September 2025, the panel determined that there were “reasonable grounds” to conclude that “the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to commit” acts of genocide. Israel’s foreign minister called the report “fake” and said it “relies entirely on Hamas falsehoods, laundered and repeated by others.”

Pillay referenced the U.S. campaign against the ICC in a video following news that she had won the Peace Prize.

“We are living through an era when international law and human rights are under significant political attack,” she said. “This worsening reality is particularly visible with the attacks on the International Criminal Court.” 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the decision to award the Peace Prize to Pillay showed that the Nobel Committee “has lost its moral compass.”

“It has awarded its highest honor to a bigot who built her career around inventing and propagating blood libels against the one and only Jewish state,” Netanyahu’s office said in a post on X.

The U.S. action against the ICC also follows a speech Rubio delivered Wednesday in Athens against the backdrop of the Acropolis, where he criticized Western governments for transferring national authority to international bureaucracies. 

“[W]ith every passing year, we seemed to outsource more of our sovereignty, transferring our decisions to global bureaucracies far beyond the reach of our control,” he said.