The administration of US President Donald Trump has dramatically escalated its long-running feud with the International Criminal Court (ICC), delivering a series of demands and threatening to impose severe new sanctions on the court itself if they are not met.
The core demand is a highly unusual insistence that the ICC amend its founding document, the Rome Statute, to ensure that the court can never investigate or prosecute US President Donald Trump and his senior officials.
A Trump administration official confirmed that this ultimatum is part of a broader set of demands communicated to ICC member nations, including key US allies, as well as the court’s leadership.
Washington has made it clear that failure to comply with these terms will lead to penalizing more ICC officials and could result in sanctioning the entire institution, a move that would significantly heighten the US campaign against the court.
The US stance is rooted in the long-held criticism by both Republican and Democratic officials that the ICC infringes upon American sovereignty, particularly since the United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC in 2002 as a court of last resort with the power to prosecute heads of state.
Beyond seeking personal immunity for the US President and his team, the Trump administration official revealed two other crucial demands tied to the sanctions threat: the ICC must drop its ongoing investigations into Israeli leaders concerning the Gaza conflict and formally terminate an earlier probe into the actions of US troops in Afghanistan.
These demands directly impact sensitive, high-profile cases. Last November, ICC judges issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli defence chief Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim al-Masri for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza conflict.
Furthermore, the court’s probe into Afghanistan, which included possible crimes by US troops, was opened in March 2020.
While the court has deprioritized looking into the US role since 2021, the Trump administration is now demanding a formal closure of that inquiry.
The threat to sanction the court marks a new level of aggression, as the US seeks to leverage its diplomatic and economic power to compel specific changes to the international judicial process and secure immunity for American and allied leaders on the global stage.
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