Jay Jackson
15 Jul 2026, 01:35 GMT+10

WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the United States will embark on a sweeping campaign to dismantle the International Criminal Court, claiming the world body is a threat to American sovereignty.

The ICC, which has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other highly ranked Israeli officials on charges including war crimes, has already been heavily sanctioned as a result of those actions. Judges, other officials, and prosecutors have also been targeted.

News that further actions, culminating in 'a sweeping campaign' to dismantle the court, comes as a shock, as America's allies are all members of the court and stand by its actions and decisions.

"The ICC poses an intolerable threat to U.S. sovereignty – it claims the authority to prosecute and even imprison American servicemen and officials operating on behalf of America's national interest. Americans never signed up for this, and all American presidents since the ICC's ratification have maintained that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over Americans," a statement issued by the State Department on Monday said.

The statement also lamented that when the international court had opened investigations into U.S. service members and intelligence officers, when called upon by the U.S., it had refused to close those cases.

"The ICC now seeks to become the unaccountable global arbiter – positioning itself above and beyond the nation state as a supranational enforcement arm of a globalist bureaucracy empowered to persecute American servicemen and officials at will," the U.S. State Department statement said. "No diplomatic option will be off-limits in the campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the ICC to Americans."

"The campaign will feature a wide range of actions intended to ensure that the International Criminal Court is incapable of threatening U.S. sovereignty or targeting Americans," the statement added.

Actions under consideration, the statement says, include:

The International Criminal Court's main purpose is to try individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression.