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Trump administration officials, facing numerous allegations of war crimes in its actions ranging from Iran to Cuba, issued punishing sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday that threaten the future of the entire body and its work to hold war criminals and genocidaires to account.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, fresh off of his ultra-nationalist speech at the Acropolis this week, said in a video announcing the sanctions that the U.S. is banning “transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us.”

The sanctions are slated to cut the court off from using U.S.-based financial services, companies, and even the U.S. dollar after six months — a move that is ruinous for the court’s officials, as the global financial system is highly dependent on the U.S. dollar.

The administration announced the sanctions just hours after Navi Pillay, who was formerly the UN’s human rights chief and an ICC judge, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Last year, Pillay led the independent UN commission that declared genocide in Gaza. The prize announcement incensed President Donald Trump, who reposted a message saying that the Nobel Committee “shamed itself beyond repair” on Truth Social.

The ICC warned that the sanctions are unprecedented, and called on its 125 member states to fight back against the U.S.’s actions.

US War on ICC Isn’t New, Isn’t Just Coming From GOP, and Isn’t Just About Israel

“It is an attempt to obstruct the course of justice and to prevent the Court from doing what it was created to do. It is an assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order which strikes at the simple principle that no one stands above the law,” the........

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