The administration of US President Donald Trump is preparing sweeping sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a whole, with an announcement expected imminently, according to sources cited by Reuters and The Wall Street Journal. The move would represent a significant escalation of Washington's campaign against the Hague-based tribunal, shifting from targeting individual judges and prosecutors to sanctioning the institution itself.
Under the planned measures, US citizens and companies would be prohibited from providing the ICC with funds, goods or services without a licence from the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, after a grace period of six to seven months. Because banks and financial institutions tend to over-comply with US sanctions — given their reliance on access to the American financial system — the practical impact could be far-reaching. ICC officials have already warned that entity-wide sanctions could disrupt the court's ability to purchase IT services and insurance, hire investigators, and make routine payments, including salaries for the dozens of American citizens it employs. A final decision could be announced as early as this week, during the United Nations General Assembly gathering in New York.
The ICC, established in 2002 and headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands, was created to prosecute individuals accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity when national courts are unable or unwilling to act. The United States has never been a member. Washington's hostility towards the court has two main drivers: the ICC's issuance of arrest warrants in November 2024 against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes in Gaza, and an earlier ICC investigation into alleged abuses by US personnel in Afghanistan. Israel, like the US, is not an ICC member and rejects the court's jurisdiction.
The Trump administration has already sanctioned more than a dozen ICC judges and prosecutors under an executive order signed in February 2025, and in August added the court's president, Tomoko Akane, to the sanctions list. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has spoken of dismantling the court