{"id":233014,"date":"2026-08-02T20:05:06","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T20:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/233014\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T20:05:06","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T20:05:06","slug":"the-us-and-israel-have-the-icc-in-their-sights-can-it-survive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/233014\/","title":{"rendered":"The US and Israel have the ICC in their sights. Can it survive?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 13 July, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed to disable and dismantle the International Criminal Court (ICC)<\/a>, including \u201cbrick by brick\u201d if necessary, escalating Washington\u2019s long-standing enmity towards the court into an explicit push to cripple its operations.<\/p>\n

That threat coincided with an internal crisis at the court. On 24 July, 82 of the court\u2019s 125 member states parties voted to remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan<\/a> over alleged workplace sexual misconduct involving a junior staff member. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s governing Bureau concluded that Khan had committed serious misconduct and a serious breach of duty, while a panel of independent judges found that the allegations had not been established beyond reasonable doubt.<\/p>\n

Khan denies the allegations, while his lawyers argue that the process was procedurally flawed and subject to external political influence. They intend to challenge the lawfulness and fairness of the vote.<\/p>\n

Before the vote, former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell argued that Khan\u2019s case was \u201cobviously part of a larger offensive against the ICC\u201d. His removal comes against a backdrop of documented Israeli surveillance of ICC officials, reported leaks about the complaint, and expanding US sanctions on ICC personnel, including six judges and three prosecutors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Khan\u2019s accuser has rejected<\/a> claims that her allegations are a proxy for the Israeli case, and said<\/a>: \u201cI fully and entirely support the court\u2019s investigations.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, an immediate concern is that further US sanctions and Israeli pressure<\/a> on the court could shape the selection of his successor, potentially weakening the court\u2019s ability to pursue the Palestine investigation.<\/p>\n

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed Khan\u2019s removal, while US State Department spokesperson Thomas Pigott stated it was \u201cgood that he is gone\u201d, calling him only a \u201csmall cog\u201d in an \u201cirredeemably corrupt\u201d institution.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever one thinks about the merit of the allegations against Karim Khan or the process that led to his dismissal, the entire episode is a stark reminder of the extent to which international courts and tribunals have a precarious existence,\u201d Michael Becker, Assistant Professor of International and European Human Rights Law at Trinity College Dublin, told The New Arab.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeyond the Khan affair, the use of sanctions to intimidate and punish international judges and the personnel at international courts runs completely counter to the ideals of a liberal democratic order and the rule of law.\u201d<\/p>\n

A watershed in international justice<\/p>\n

Khan\u2019s departure does not invalidate the arrest warrants<\/a> for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, at least not immediately, since warrants are issued and withdrawn by the court’s judges, not by the prosecutor acting alone.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s widening sanctions and threats instead signal a broader objective to make investigations involving Israel and the United States institutionally and personally prohibitive.<\/p>\n

In issuing the warrants in November 2024, ICC judges<\/a> found reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant bore criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare.<\/p>\n

The ICC found grounds to believe Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and then-defence minister Yoav Gallant bore responsibility for war crimes in Gaza, including starvation. [Getty]<\/p>\n

Expanding on those warrants, Khan reportedly\u00a0sought warrants for up to five other Israeli officials<\/a>\u00a0in recent months, including far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Orit Strook, and two military leaders.<\/p>\n

Israel disputes both the allegations and the ICC\u2019s jurisdiction<\/a>, arguing that its non-party status means the court has no authority to prosecute Israeli officials.<\/p>\n

Palestine, however, was recognised as an ICC state party in 2021<\/a>, allowing the court to exercise jurisdiction over alleged Rome Statute crimes committed on Palestinian territory, including by nationals of non-member states.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the ICC issued warrants after rejecting Israel\u2019s jurisdictional challenges.<\/p>\n

Punishing the judges, prosecutors, and evidence providers who allow such a case to proceed is different in kind. These punitive measures by Washington appear designed not merely to contest the legal argument, but to ensure those who issued them pay for it, and that no one takes the case up again.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThe warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant were a watershed in the history of international justice. In over two decades, ICC prosecutors had never sought the indictment of a Western or pro-Western official,\u201d Reed Brody, a veteran human rights lawyer and board member for Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) told The New Arab.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil then, the instruments of international justice had been turned almost exclusively against defeated adversaries, as at the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, or powerless outcasts or opponents of the West – like Slobodan Milo\u0161evi\u0107, Vladimir Putin,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd people like me were long demanding that the ICC apply the law to Western allies as well. And the moment it did – when it charged Netanyahu and Gallant over Gaza – that is precisely when the United States moved to strangle it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US’s widening sanctions and threats signal a broader objective to make investigations involving Israel and the United States institutionally and personally prohibitive. [Getty]<\/p>\n

From hostility to coercion<\/p>\n

In protecting its ally, Israel, the US has adopted stronger rhetoric towards the ICC. On 2 July, the US Department of Justice declared that Washington would not cooperate with any ICC investigation, inquiry, summons or proceeding, including the transfer of US persons to the court.<\/p>\n

American hostility to the ICC predates Trump. A longstanding view in Washington is that the court threatens US sovereignty. The 2002 American Servicemembers’ Protection Act, nicknamed the Hague Invasion Act by its critics, authorised “all means necessary and appropriate” to free certain personnel detained on the court’s behalf.<\/p>\n

The first Trump administration escalated in 2020, after the ICC authorised an investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan<\/a> that invariably would have encompassed alleged abuses by US forces.<\/p>\n

Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo named court officials and invoked their families, and Trump authorised asset freezes and entry bans before sanctioning Karim Khan\u2019s predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, and a senior colleague.<\/p>\n

Although Joe Biden lifted those sanctions and supported the ICC\u2019s pursuit of Russian officials including Vladimir Putin for the war in Ukraine, he called the Netanyahu warrant \u201coutrageous\u201d as Washington\u2019s support for Israel remained robust.<\/p>\n

While Biden\u2019s administration exposed a clear double standard, Trump\u2019s return and systematic offensive have cemented a broader disregard for the court and international law.<\/p>\n

His February 2025 order authorised restrictions on those assisting ICC action involving American or allied nationals. Washington subsequently targeted judges, prosecutors, Palestinian rights groups and Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory.<\/p>\n

Brody said the use of such powers marked a fundamental attack on judicial independence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat this campaign reveals is that the US and Israel don’t object to how the ICC works – they object to the idea that the law could ever apply to them,\u201d he told The New Arab.<\/p>\n

\u201cSanctioning judges, freezing their bank accounts, cutting off their credit cards – these are the tools we designed for drug kingpins and terrorist financiers, now deployed against jurists for issuing arrest warrants. It is an attack not on a ruling but on the very principle, born at Nuremberg, that no one is above the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The damage spreads past the designated individuals. Banks and technology providers withdraw services rather than risk violating US restrictions, cutting off the accounts, software and contractors the court needs to gather evidence and protect witnesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are outrageous attacks on legal professionals for doing their jobs. They are part of a broader US assault on international law as such,\u201d Tom Dannenbaum, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, told The New Arab.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmong ongoing investigations, it is clear that the Palestine investigation and the cases associated with it will be the primary target of these efforts, although the impacts will reverberate across all situations under investigation at the Court, including those that the United States has previously supported.\u201d<\/p>\n

The battle over the ICC’s future<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s role extends beyond denunciation and appeals.\u00a0 On 26 July, Netanyahu confirmed that he had discussed Washington\u2019s ongoing campaign against the ICC with Rubio.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s campaign against the ICC predates Khan. A joint investigation<\/a> by The Guardian, +972 Magazine and Local Call reported that Israeli intelligence had surveilled ICC officials, including hacking emails and phone calls, and pressured witnesses and Palestinian organisations since 2015.<\/p>\n

Former prosecutor Fatou Bensouda was a key target. Mossad head Yossi Cohen had threatened her and her family if she pursued the ICC\u2019s probe against Israel, she said in an interview with Al Jazeera, while she also mentioned being on the receiving end of thug-like tactics and intimidation.<\/p>\n

Dannenbaum warned that Washington would probably seek to influence the selection process so that the next prosecutor freezes or terminates the Palestine investigation and requests the withdrawal of the Netanyahu and Gallant warrants.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuite apart from US influence on the election process, candidates will be certain that any commitment to the Palestine investigation and the associated cases (or to any investigation of US persons in any future situation) will lead to their individual financial sanctioning by the United States and would entail the risk of exposure to other forms of intimidation and coercion,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Dannenbaum also warned that Washington could impose sanctions on the ICC as an institution, rather than only on individuals.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsent a robust and collective response by States Parties, that could bring the ICC to a standstill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the campaign reinforces a critique long made across the Global South: international law is treated as binding when it serves US objectives but as optional when it attempts to constrain an ally.<\/p>\n

The consequences of international courts being sidelined and undermined are real.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first casualties are the victims,\u201d Brody told The New Arab. \u201cWhen the most powerful country on earth punishes prosecutors for doing their jobs, it tells survivors of atrocities everywhere that power, not justice, will decide their fate.\u201d<\/p>\n

ICC members therefore face a choice between rhetorical support and material protection. Brody urged them to end \u201c\u00e0-la-carte cooperation\u201d, properly fund the court, insulate sanctioned personnel from US restrictions, activate the EU Blocking Statute, and pursue a UN General Assembly condemnation and ICJ advisory opinion.<\/p>\n

Dannenbaum similarly said that \u201cit is essential that States Parties act proactively and collectively to protect the Court, the process of electing and appointing a new prosecutor, and the individual that takes that role from these multifaceted attacks\u201d.<\/p>\n

Brody framed the ultimate stakes starkly: \u201cThe question I keep asking is whether international justice will be buried in the rubble of Gaza – or whether, like after Nuremberg, it will be reborn from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonathan Fenton-Harvey is a journalist and researcher who focuses on conflict, geopolitics, and humanitarian issues in the Middle East and North Africa<\/p>\n

Follow him on Twitter:\u00a0@jfentonharvey<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Edited by Charlie Hoyle<\/p>\n