Senate Republicans urge Trump to sanction ICC after failed legislation push

Senate Republicans are recommending President Trump issue an executive order to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) for its pursuit of war crimes cases against Israel, after Senate Democrats blocked sanctions legislation absent a bipartisan compromise.

The appeal comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to meet Trump at the White House on Feb. 4.

Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he has encouraged Trump to issue the executive order and said the president was responsive, but he didn’t elaborate.

“That’s all I want to say at this point. I’m confident that we’ll get it,” Risch told reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, the day after the failed floor vote.

“I would have preferred to have Congress speak on it. But if they won’t help, let’s let Trump do it.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and his former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant last spring on allegations Israel used starvation as a weapon of war during the conflict with Hamas in Gaza.

The U.S. is one of the few countries that Netanyahu can visit without fear of arrest. Countries that are parties to the ICC are compelled to act on arrest warrants from the court.

Presidents from both parties along with a majority of GOP and Democratic lawmakers have criticized the ICC’s arrest warrants as illegitimate because Israel is not a party to the court. They also criticize the court for going after countries that have robust judicial systems to investigate themselves, like the U.S. and Israel.

Trump issued sanctions on the court during his first term in office over their pursuit of war crimes investigations against U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. He used “national emergency authorities” in an executive order that criticized the court as overreaching in its investigations of U.S. “allies.” The order did not name Israel.

Former President Biden used an executive order to terminate Trump’s national emergency and ICC sanctions when he entered office, and the ICC dropped the Afghanistan investigations a few months later.

While Trump revoked Biden’s executive order on day one of his second term, the pathway to impose new sanctions on the ICC is not entirely clear.

“Without an active investigation into U.S. actions, it is harder for Trump to make the case that the Court’s actions necessitate the declaration of a ‘national emergency’ for the United States,” Tess Bridgeman and Rebecca Hamilton wrote in Just Security, an online security publication.

Democrats blocked a GOP bill this week to sanction the ICC, but their objection was to the failure to reach a bipartisan compromise, not to the merit of the bill.

“There's not a whole lot of love lost for the ICC,” said a senior Democratic staffer, criticizing the ICC’s Afghanistan investigation and arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticized the ICC legislation text as being overly broad, as it would open up American allies and U.S. businesses that contract with the court to sanctions.

She also sought to impose sanctions that targeted the Israel investigations but preserved Washington’s ability to cooperate in investigations into Russian war crimes in Ukraine, or other global atrocities like the civil war in Sudan.

The senior Democratic staffer said Shaheen was still open to negotiations with Republicans on a way forward, but Risch shot that down.

“I think at this point, they’ve had their shot, and we negotiated with them. They’ve had their shot. I think next what we need to do is have Trump go back and put the sanctions on just like he did, before Biden took them off. It’s a lot easier route to go."

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