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The international criminal court is bracing itself for Donald Trump to launch aggressive economic sanctions against it this week, amid fears such a move could paralyse its work and pose an existential threat.
ICC officials are preparing for Trump’s new US administration to act quickly once in office to impose draconian financial and travel restrictions against the court and senior staff, including its chief prosecutor and judges.
The threat of US sanctions has loomed over the ICC since it issued arrest warrants in November against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
In response to the warrants, the US House of Representatives voted earlier this month to impose sanctions on the ICC, advancing legislation that Republican leaders have said will soon be voted on in the Senate.
However, multiple ICC sources said the court’s leadership fears Trump will not wait for the legislation but launch a swift assault by issuing an executive order creating the legal basis for multiple rounds of sanctions.
According to interviews with officials and diplomats familiar with the ICC’s preparations, the court is planning for a “worst case scenario” in which the US imposes sanctions against the institution in addition to measures targeting individuals.
ICC sources said that sanctions against senior court figures would be difficult but manageable, whereas institution-wide sanctions would pose an existential threat to the court as they would block its access to services it depends on to function.
“The concern is the sanctions will be used to shut the court down, to destroy it rather than just tie its hands,” one ICC officials said.
Core services that would be jeopardised by institutional sanctions include the ICC’s access to banking and payment systems, IT infrastructure and insurance providers. Such measures would prevent US-based companies from conducting business or transactions with the court.
One key concern to have emerged in recent months is the ICC’s reliance on Microsoft which has deepened in recent years after chief prosecutor Karim Khan formed a partnership with the company to overhaul the court’s systems.
Multiple sources in the prosecutor’s office said Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform is critical to its operations and suspending access would paralyse its investigations. “We essentially store all of our evidence in the cloud,” one said.
Court authorities are understood to have been rapidly reviewing the ICC’s suppliers and have ended some commercial relationships in an effort to reduce its exposure. Some staff have been advised to consider closing any US bank accounts they hold.
Working with some of its member states, the court is also understood to have explored using legal mechanisms in the EU and UK that prevent residents and companies from complying with certain foreign sanctions regimes.
“It’s not a silver bullet,” a European diplomat said, but the hope among ICC officials is that the so-called blocking statutes could protect companies that want to continue dealing with the court despite the sanctions.
The ICC previously dealt with US sanctions in 2020 when the first Trump administration imposed travel bans and asset freezes against former prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and one of her top officials.
Although the measures – launched in response to decisions made by Bensouda in war crimes investigations in Afghanistan and the occupied Palestinian territories – were aggressive and highly unusual, they were relatively narrow.
The latest round of US sanctions is expected to affect a wider group of ICC officials and will come at the beginning of a new Trump administration, raising fears among court staff that the sanctions will evolve and escalate over time.
Päivi Kaukoranta, president of the ICC’s governing body, said sanctions risked severely hampering the court’s investigations and could “affect the safety of victims, witnesses and sanctioned individuals”. She said the court’s work must be allowed to “proceed without interference”.
Disrupting the ICC’s operations, however, appears to be part of an explicit effort to force the court to withdraw the arrest warrants issued against Netanyahu and Gallant.
The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahranoth reported last week the US sanctions would be used to “exert unprecedented pressure” to achieve this goal. It quoted a senior Israeli official as saying: “We will bring the court to its knees and then negotiate the closure of the case.”
With the return of Trump to the White House, ICC officials believe Israel will be in a stronger position to persuade the US to use powerful tools at its disposal to damage the court and, in particular, target chief prosecutor Khan.
Under the previous Trump administration, the Guardian reported last year, Israeli and US officials coordinated efforts to place public and private pressure on Bensouda, his predecessor, which involved what sources described as a diplomatic “smear campaign”.
Multiple sources in the prosecutor’s office said they believed the court was now more vulnerable to US and Israeli attacks and smears after allegations of sexual misconduct against Khan had emerged in October. Khan has denied the allegations and said he will cooperate with an external inquiry into the claims.
