Van Hollen Says ICC Members Would Sanction Trump and Rubio If They 'Have Any Self-Respect’

As the United Nations General Assembly prepared to meet, a US senator said President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio should face sanctions for their role in trying to destroy the International Criminal Court in order to protect Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"If European countries and other signatories to the International Criminal Court (ICC) have any self-respect, they'd sanction Rubio and Trump for obstructing investigations of Netanyahu's war crimes," wrote Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) Monday on social media.

He was responding to a report from the Wall Street Journal detailing "a sharp escalation" in the Trump administration's efforts to, in Rubio's words, "dismantle" the ICC, which issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in 2024. The body accused the prime minister and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including the deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war.

The ICC has also reportedly launched investigations into two other far-right ministers in Netanyahu's cabinet, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for their roles in aggressively expanding Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law.

The Trump administration had already aggressively sanctioned ICC officials involved in efforts to prosecute Americans or Israelis, including then-chief prosecutor Karim Khan and several judges and prosecutors. It had also sanctioned UN special rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese and several Palestinian human rights organizations that had brought evidence of alleged Israeli crimes before the tribunal.

Now, The Journal reports that:

The Trump administration is preparing to impose sweeping sanctions on the [ICC]...

The sanctions would forbid most transactions with the ICC after a grace period of six to seven months... That could potentially cripple the court by prohibiting it from conducting transactions in US dollars, cutting it off from much of the global financial system.

It is unclear when a final decision and announcement might come, though some US officials said the move could be finalized as soon as this week during the United Nations General Assembly meeting or in the following days.

Several world leaders have been vocally critical of the US attack on the ICC, though they've stopped short of calling for sanctions against US officials.

Responding to Rubio's sanctions in August, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa said that the ICC's "judges and officials must be able to act independently and without external pressure."

Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen, whose nation is home to the ICC, said the Netherlands disapproves of efforts to sanction the court, adding that Dutch officials were actively working with the EU to protect the court from institution-wide US sanctions. Possible protective measures reportedly include alternative banking and payment arrangements outside the US dollar system.

There have also been calls within the European Parliament, including from Spanish socialist politician Iratxe García Pérez and others, to activate the EU's so-called "blocking statute," which would prohibit European companies from complying with the US sanctions.