Trump says Rubio working to bring ICC ‘to heel’ to ‘defend Bibi and others’

Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday touted the Trump administration’s efforts to bring the International Criminal Court to its knees, which the US president linked to its prosecution of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The International Criminal Court has made themselves illegitimate because they claim that even if you’re not a member of that court, we can come after you,” Rubio said during a cabinet meeting held at the Camp David presidential retreat.

“We tried to get them to reform and listen to us, they wouldn’t do it. They’re very arrogant. So we’ve now begun an effort to really try to bring them to heel,” he added.

US President Donald Trump chimed in to clarify that Rubio was not advancing the initiative to defend him, as the ICC is not currently seeking to prosecute the US president.

“He’s trying to defend Bibi and various other people,” Trump added, referring to the Israeli premier.

Rubio also celebrated the administration’s brokering of agreements between Israel and Lebanon as well as the disarmament deal between the Board of Peace and Hamas — “something a lot of people thought would never happen. It needs to happen, but the fact that people agree to it is a real achievement.

The secretary of state’s remarks Friday came several weeks after he unveiled the administration’s effort to “dismantle” the ICC, which Trump and other senior US officials have long said should not have the authority to investigate and prosecute Americans, particularly members of the US military.

The ICC was established in 2002 by the international community to prosecute war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. It asserts jurisdiction only if a member state is unable or unwilling to prosecute atrocities itself. The United States has never been a member of the court, nor has Israel.

Trump’s hostility toward the court goes back to his first term. It manifested again with a plan to punish ICC officials, an idea hatched in November 2024 when Trump was reelected and the ICC issued warrants for Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Israel has dismissed the ICC’s warrants against its officials as biased and antisemitic. It also entirely rejects the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court to arrest or prosecute its leaders, having never joined the international conventions that created it, and argues that the membership of the Palestinian Authority does not grant the ICC jurisdiction either, due to explicit provisions of the Oslo Accords.

The ICC has no enforcement methods and relies on the cooperation of party nations to carry out its warrants.

Agencies and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

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