The Trump administration recently announced a series of sanctions intended to “dismantle” the International Criminal Court (ICC) “brick by brick.”
Let’s be clear: These sanctions are not meant to protect U.S. citizens. The Trump administration is trying to destroy a key pillar of international justice to shield themselves and Israel from any accountability.
In December 2025, a Trump administration official claimed that the administration was pressuring the ICC to amend its founding document to ensure that it can never investigate President Trump or his top officials. It also demanded the ICC drop its investigation of Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and formally end a probe it began in 2020 (and suspended a year later) of possible crimes committed by U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
If the ICC did not meet these demands, the Trump administration threatened to sanction the court itself. With these latest sanctions, the administration has made good on those threats.
Neither the U.S. nor Israel are party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that originally established the ICC. The court therefore does not — nor has it ever claimed to — have general jurisdiction over crimes committed by citizens of those countries, including servicemen, police officers, border patrol, ICE agents, or elected officials.
What the ICC does claim is jurisdiction over offenses committed in any territory party to the Statue — including by citizens of non-member nations. So while the ICC cannot probe ICE shootings of people in the United States, it can rightfully investigate Israel’s genocide in Palestine and U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan. Both Afghanistan and Palestine have joined the Rome Statute.
Since Iran is not a member of the ICC, the Trump administration’s possible war crimes there — including bombing a girl’s school, a sport center, and residential buildings — are beyond the court’s scope. The same applies to Cuba.
Notably, while the Trump administration emphasizes the alleged abuses of the ICC, it offers no alternatives to the high court. This is intentional. Whether it’s dismantling the ICC, withdrawing the U.S. from over 60 international organizations, or threatening to annex U.S. allies, the goal is the same: to destroy international law and replace it with the law of “might makes right.” To create a world where Trump and his allies can pillage and plunder as they see fit without repercussions.
It’s a remarkable achievement that the ICC exists at all. The fact that over 120 parties agreed to voluntarily submit themselves to an accountability framework that puts global welfare above the personal ambitions of leaders is a triumph of democracy and international relations. That is worth defending.
Of course, the ICC is far from perfect. While it has accomplished some noteworthy feats, humanitarian groups like Amnesty International have rightly criticized the ICC’s selective approach to global justice.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, the court moved with unprecedented speed and launched its largest operation ever to investigate possible war crimes committed by Vladimir Putin and his government. But the same body deprioritized its probe into U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and decided not to investigate UK war crimes in Iraq.
These are serious problems that must be addressed, but the solution is not simply to dismantle the ICC — especially if the alternative is to submit ourselves to the whims of the most powerful nations or billionaire-led bodies like Trump’s Board of Peace.
What we must do instead is empower global institutions to not only punish those who commit heinous acts, but to work together to ensure that those who are wronged receive restitution — and, ultimately, to ensure that crimes against humanity never occur again.
