On October 9, 2026, Secretary of State Marco Rubio put sanctions on the International Criminal Court itself. Earlier rounds went after individual judges and prosecutors. This one targets the institution. The US government can now seize ICC assets held in the United States or controlled by US persons.
Rubio was open about what he wants. He said the US would keep working to dismantle the court "brick by brick" if its allies did not rein it in, and he put it plainly:
Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC.
The sanctions grow out of President Trump's February 2025 executive order, issued in response to the ICC's arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant over war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, and to the court's investigation into possible US crimes in Afghanistan. Rubio says the new measures protect Americans from prosecution. They also protect Israeli officials.
The court is only the latest target. Over the past year the administration has sanctioned ICC judges and prosecutors, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, and three Palestinian human rights groups that had given the court evidence of Israeli war crimes. Every one of them was trying to get Israel's conduct in Gaza in front of a judge.
Human Rights Watch executive director Philippe Bolopion said:
The Trump administration has made clear its aim to destroy the ICC to shield US and Israeli officials from facing charges before the court.
The ICC said the measure targets an independent court created by treaty and trusted by 125 states parties to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and aggression. War crimes prosecutor Reed Brody called the sanctions an insurance policy against accountability for crimes the US and its ally Israel are committing in plain sight. The announcement came on the same day the Nobel Peace Prize went to Navi Pillay, a former ICC judge, for her role in making sure war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are prosecuted.
Meanwhile, the crimes this court exists to examine have not stopped. The UN reports 1,493 Palestinians killed and 5,299 injured in Gaza since the October 2025 ceasefire, and Gaza's health authorities put the total killed since October 2023 at 74,480. In the West Bank, the Israeli monitoring group Yesh Din has counted at least 170 settler attacks since around September 27, when the olive harvest began. On October 16, settlers beat Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine to the ground while she covered the harvest near Ramallah. Rubio said the US was "very disturbed" by the images.
The same official who called that attack disturbing is now trying to dismantle the court with jurisdiction over it. Palestine joined the ICC in 2015, giving the court authority over crimes committed on Palestinian territory since June 2014. Human Rights Watch and three other rights groups sued in federal court in August to have the sanctions regime struck down.
A government that trusted its own conduct would not need to destroy the court that examines it.