By Saqib S. Qureshi — SCN News
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration has prepared sanctions against the International Criminal Court as an institution, moving beyond penalties against individual judges and prosecutors in what could become an unprecedented U.S. effort to financially isolate the global tribunal, two sources familiar with the preparations told Reuters. The measures are expected to sharply escalate Washington’s confrontation with the Hague-based court over its arrest warrants for Israeli officials and its past investigation involving U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
The exact timing of the announcement remains unclear, and the State Department had not publicly confirmed the new measures when Reuters reported the preparations. The Wall Street Journal, citing officials, reported that a final decision could come as soon as this week while world leaders are gathering in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, placing the confrontation over the ICC alongside a broader series of diplomatic disputes involving Washington, Israel and the Palestinian issue.
The scope of the proposed action is what makes the development particularly significant. Washington has already sanctioned individual ICC officials, including judges and prosecutors, but sources told Reuters the administration is now preparing to target the court itself, potentially restricting American companies and citizens from providing it with money, goods or services without authorization from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Such an entity-wide designation could reach far beyond travel restrictions on senior officials and into the infrastructure required to operate an international judicial institution.
The ICC employs roughly 900 people from around 100 countries, according to Reuters, and relies on commercial providers for services ranging from banking and insurance to data storage, email systems and other information technology. U.S. sanctions could complicate routine financial transactions, affect American employees and make outside investigators and contractors reluctant to work with the court. Even companies outside the United States could reconsider doing business with the ICC if they believed their access to the U.S.-dominated financial system might be put at risk.
That potential secondary impact explains why sanctions against an entire international court could be considerably more disruptive than the measures Washington has already imposed on specific officials. The dollar’s central role in international finance gives U.S. sanctions influence well beyond American territory, while banks and multinational companies frequently adopt restrictions more broadly than legally required to avoid exposure to U.S. enforcement. Reuters reported that the result could range from difficulties with credit cards and visas to cancelled contracts for technology, communications and investigative services.
The Trump administration says its campaign is rooted in opposition to what it regards as illegitimate ICC jurisdiction over the United States and Israel, neither of which is a party to the Rome Statute that established the court. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has described the ICC as a threat to U.S. sovereignty and American allies and in July announced a broader campaign to isolate it, including encouraging member countries to withdraw their support. Washington also wants the court to abandon arrest warrants targeting Israeli leaders and has objected to its earlier Afghanistan investigation.
Trump laid the legal foundation for renewed U.S. sanctions shortly after returning to office. In a February 2025 executive order, he accused the ICC of taking “illegitimate and baseless actions” against the United States and Israel and specifically condemned its warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant. The order invoked U.S. emergency economic powers and authorized financial and visa restrictions against people involved in ICC investigations or prosecutions of protected U.S. personnel and certain allies.
The ICC issued warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant in November 2024, alleging criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity connected to the Gaza conflict. Israel has rejected the allegations and challenged the court’s jurisdiction. The warrants are judicial allegations rather than findings of guilt, and the ICC does not conduct trials in absentia, meaning any prosecution would require defendants to come before the court.
The jurisdictional dispute is more complicated than the fact that Israel is not an ICC member. The court considers Palestine a state party to the Rome Statute and has asserted jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed in Palestinian territory, an interpretation Israel and the United States dispute. That disagreement has become one of the central legal and diplomatic fault lines behind Washington’s confrontation with the tribunal.
The United States has also never ratified the Rome Statute. Successive U.S. administrations have maintained objections to ICC jurisdiction over American nationals without Washington’s consent, although U.S. policy toward the institution has varied significantly between administrations. Trump imposed sanctions on ICC personnel during his first term in 2020 over the Afghanistan investigation; the Biden administration subsequently lifted those sanctions while maintaining U.S. objections to some aspects of the court’s jurisdiction.
Trump’s second administration has gone substantially further. Washington sanctioned additional ICC judges and prosecutors before targeting the court’s president and another senior official in August. Rubio has described the broader strategy in unusually explicit terms, saying the administration intended to use its available tools to isolate the institution.
Reuters reported Monday that sanctioning the entire ICC would be an unprecedented U.S. step against an international judicial institution of this kind. American emergency economic powers have traditionally been used against foreign governments, militant organizations, alleged terrorists, narcotics traffickers, warlords and other designated actors. Extending comparable financial restrictions to an international court supported by 125 member states would push the confrontation into substantially different territory.
The potential consequences are already prompting preparations in Europe. The Netherlands, which hosts the ICC in The Hague, has been examining how the court could continue operating if Washington expands its sanctions, while the institution has sought to reduce vulnerabilities associated with American technology and financial providers. European officials have also considered whether existing legal mechanisms could protect companies and individuals working with the court, although Reuters reported that there is not yet clear agreement within the European Union over how far such protections should go.
One possibility is the EU’s so-called blocking statute, which can restrict European companies from complying with certain foreign sanctions that Brussels considers unlawful. ICC President Judge Tomoko Akane previously urged the European Union to consider using the mechanism to shield the court. All EU member states are parties to the ICC, but political support for a direct confrontation with Washington over sanctions cannot be assumed, and it remains unclear whether Brussels would activate the measure.
The dispute also reaches beyond the Gaza war. The ICC was created in 2002 as a permanent court of last resort for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and, under specified conditions, the crime of aggression. Its system is based on the principle of complementarity: the court is intended to intervene when relevant national jurisdictions are unwilling or genuinely unable to investigate and prosecute crimes falling within its mandate, rather than routinely replacing national courts.
Washington’s pressure campaign could therefore have consequences for cases unrelated to Israel or the United States. The ICC conducts investigations and proceedings concerning alleged atrocities in several countries, and restrictions on its financial, technological and investigative infrastructure could affect the institution across its workload rather than being confined to the cases that prompted U.S. objections. That broader operational effect is one reason court supporters have warned that institution-wide sanctions could weaken international accountability mechanisms more generally.
The administration takes the opposite view, arguing that the court has exceeded legitimate limits and threatens the sovereignty of countries that never accepted its jurisdiction. Trump said in July that his administration’s current campaign was intended primarily to defend Netanyahu rather than protect himself personally, reinforcing the extent to which the Israeli warrants have become central to the latest U.S.-ICC confrontation.
The timing adds another diplomatic dimension. The possibility of an announcement during UNGA81 would place sanctions against one of the world’s principal international criminal-justice institutions before many of the same governments that finance and politically support it. It could also force U.S. allies that are ICC members to balance their treaty obligations and support for the court against financial and diplomatic exposure to Washington.
For now, however, the distinction between prepared sanctions and imposed sanctions remains essential. Reuters’ sources say the administration has completed preparations and intends to announce the measures soon, but the precise sanctions, their effective date, possible exemptions and any Treasury licensing arrangements had not been publicly released as of Monday. The administration’s final action could therefore determine whether the measure functions primarily as another layer of political pressure or creates severe practical obstacles to the ICC’s day-to-day operations.