A senior legal adviser to the US State Department has issued a dramatic threat to the International Criminal Court’s oversight body, warning that “all options are on the table” if the court does not drop investigations and arrest warrants against the US and Israel.
Reed Rubinstein made the threat on Tuesday during a meeting of the Assembly of State Parties (ASP), the ICC’s oversight body, in New York.
“We will use all appropriate and effective diplomatic, political and legal instruments to block ICC overreach,” the US representative warned.
“Our additional sanctions of June 5 should underscore our resolve,” he added, referencing the US’s recent move to sanction four ICC judges who issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant last November.
Rubinstein went on to threaten the ICC: “To be clear, we expect all ICC actions against the United States and our ally Israel – that is, all investigations and all arrest warrants – to be terminated,” he said.
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“If not, all options remain on the table.”
The ASP was meeting to discuss a potential amendment to the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding treaty, to expand the court’s jurisdiction over the “crime of aggression”.
The court has jurisdiction in the 125 countries that recognise its authority.
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But the amendment would empower it to prosecute the crime of aggression if it was commited on the territory of an ICC member state, as is already the case with crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.
Neither the US nor Israel are parties to the Rome Statute and have long rejected the authority of the court. Rubinstein was permitted to attend and speak at the meeting as an observer.
The court has previously investigated alleged war crimes committed by American forces based in Afghanistan, which is a signatory to the Rome Statute.
Rubinstein claimed that “the ICC has engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel”.
He added that the ICC “has wrongfully abused its power and that its malign conduct threatens to infringe US sovereignty and undermine our critical national security and foreign policy work”.
And he reminded the ASP of the financial and visa sanctions the US imposed on ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan in February.
Khan, a British citizen, has had his American visa revoked and his wife and children have been banned from travelling to the US. His bank accounts have been frozen in the UK.
Rubinstein, the State Department adviser, has been widely criticised in the US for claiming on social media in February 2024 that the Biden administration had a “massive program to overthrow the Israeli government”.
‘[The ICC’s] malign conduct threatens to infringe US sovereignty and undermine our critical national security and foreign policy work’
– Reed Rubinstein, State Department legal adviser
Challenged on the post during a Senate foreign relations hearing in March, Rubinstein said: “During the Obama administration, the State Department was running money to fund an anti-government operation inside of Israel.
“Many of the same people, who were involved in the Obama administration State Department, came back under President Biden, and it appears to me, based on emails that I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and that we read, that the same playbook was being run.”
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the committee ranking member, said his statements constituted “conspiracy theories”.
Escalating US sanctions
Rubinstein’s message to the ASP came a day before the Trump administration announced on Wednesday that it was imposing sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur for Palestine.
The sanctions follow Albanese’s scathing report on 30 June, in which she named over 60 companies, including major US technology firms like Google, Amazon and Microsoft, which she said were involved in “the transformation of Israel’s economy of occupation to an economy of genocide”.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday evening that “Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated.”
The sanctions will freeze any assets Albanese, an Italian citizen, has in the US and would likely restrict her ability to travel to the US.
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On Thursday, UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk urged the “prompt reversal” of the sanctions on Albanese. He said that “attacks and threats against Special Procedures mandate holders, as well as key institutions like the International Criminal Court, must stop”.
The ICC is increasingly beleaguered and many experts believe the court itself could soon be targeted by US sanctions if the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant are not dropped.
Khan, its British chief prosecutor, is currently on leave after attempts failed to suspend him, and pending a United Nations investigation into sexual assault allegations against him, which he denies.
He went on leave in May as he was reportedly preparing new arrest warrants for far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich over their promotion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The warrants are now in the hands of two deputy prosecutors, and the court recently ordered that any further warrants cannot be publicised.
‘Warning shot over the bows’
A prominent ICC defence counsel, Nicholas Kaufman, told Israel’s Kan public radio in a podcast on 8 June that recent US sanctions on four ICC judges were “meant to be designed to encourage the dropping of the arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Gallant”.
Kaufman added: “Accordingly, most commentators believe that [the imposition of sanctions] is a further warning shot over the bows, if I can put it that way, before the sanctioning of the deputy prosecutors who’ve now taken over from Karim Khan, who has gone out on self-imposed leave because of the allegations of sexual misconduct.”
MEE revealed on 16 June that the British government was lobbying the US against sanctioning the court itself.
Diplomatic sources said the US informed its allies that to avoid facing further sanctions, the court has to permanently close all actions against the US and Israel.
The US also said the ICC must commit to not targeting US nationals and US allies who have not consented to the court’s jurisdiction.
If the US sanctions the court as an institution, this would prevent banks and software companies from dealing with it, which could prove an existential threat to the ICC, as it could destroy its ability to function.
