Global Pulse

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  • Uganda cuts defence ties with Turkey over Somalia dispute, sources say

    Uganda cuts defence ties with Turkey over Somalia dispute, sources say

    In a sudden move that grabbed international headlines, the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) announced Saturday an immediate suspension of all defense and military cooperation with Turkey. While Ugandan local media initially tied the decision to anti-Turkey demonstrations staged outside the Turkish embassy in Kampala by supporters of the Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU) – a group led by Uganda’s top military general Muhoozi Kainerugaba – multiple insiders close to the situation tell a different story to Middle East Eye.

    The protests, which centered on a demand that Turkey extradite exiled Ugandan political commentator Fred Lumbuye (who has resided in Turkey since 2013), are nothing more than a convenient public pretext, according to sources. The real root of the rift lies in deep-seated disagreements over the future of Uganda’s long-standing military deployment in Somalia, and Ankara’s rapidly expanding influence over the East African nation’s security landscape.

    Uganda currently deploys approximately 4,500 troops to Somalia as part of the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (Aussom), the primary multinational security force backing the Somali national army. An additional 2,000 Ugandan troops are stationed in the country under a separate bilateral agreement, a military source confirmed to Agence France-Presse. For years, this deployment has generated steady, significant revenue for Kampala: insiders report Uganda receives at least $1,000 per deployed soldier each month, a payment stream that underpins a large portion of its military budget for overseas operations.

    But that revenue stream is now at severe risk. The entire future of the Aussom mission was thrown into uncertainty back in July, when the United States notified the African Union that it would cut all funding to the UN Support Office in Somalia by the end of 2024. That office provides critical logistical backing for the entire AU mission, and its loss of funding has left the mission’s long-term viability and funding structure up in the air – and put pressure on troop-contributing countries like Uganda to reconsider their deployments.

    Compounding this uncertainty, sources tell MEE that the Somali federal government has formally requested Uganda withdraw its military forces, pointing directly to the growing strength of Turkish-trained Somali security units. Over the past decade, Turkey has emerged as the primary external trainer for Somali military personnel: it has trained roughly 25,000 Somali soldiers at facilities in Mogadishu, and an additional 10,000 elite commandos at training bases within Turkey’s own borders. As these trained forces have matured, Somali authorities have increasingly argued they are capable of shouldering the burden of domestic security.

    For Kampala, a full withdrawal from Somalia would carry a massive financial cost. Insiders estimate that Uganda stands to lose between $5 million and $6 million per month, or $60 million to $72 million annually, if the AU mission ends and all troops are pulled out. Facing this steep loss, Uganda has opted to pressure Turkey – which Kampala views as the main powerbroker shaping Somalia’s new security order – to intervene and resolve the looming crisis, sources explained.

    Tunc Demirtas, a security researcher at the Ankara-based think tank Seta, confirmed that the shifting security landscape in Somalia makes a reduced international presence inevitable. “Somalia’s government is now capable of providing its own security for its capital and surrounding regions and as its state capacity is built up, it requires less support from abroad,” Demirtas told MEE, adding that the long-standing foreign military presence in Somalia has spawned a war economy that has benefited foreign troop contributors including Uganda.

    For its part, Turkey is actively working behind the scenes to de-escalate the dispute, according to sources. Ankara is concerned that the breakdown in defense ties could spill over to impact major Turkish commercial projects in Uganda, including large-scale infrastructure and transport contracts. Agence France-Presse reports that Kampala is considering canceling a $3 billion railway contract awarded to leading Turkish construction firm Yapi Merkezi, and could even order the expulsion of Turkish nationals from Ugandan territory – moves that would cause significant economic and diplomatic damage to Ankara.

  • Man guilty of attempted murder for shooting three men of Palestinian descent in Vermont

    Man guilty of attempted murder for shooting three men of Palestinian descent in Vermont

    Nearly three years after a high-profile shooting that left one young man paralyzed and two others injured in Burlington, Vermont, a U.S. jury has delivered a guilty verdict on charges of attempted murder against 51-year-old shooter Jason Eaton, rejecting his legal team’s core argument that he was legally insane at the time of the attack.

    The November 2023 attack targeted three 20-year-old Palestinian-American students: Hisham Awartani of Brown University, Tahseen Aliahmad of Trinity College, and Kinnan Abdalhamid of Haverford College. The three childhood friends, who had all attended school together in Ramallah, were in Vermont visiting Awartani’s grandmother for the Thanksgiving holiday when the violence occurred. According to court records and witness accounts, the group was walking near Eaton’s residential neighborhood, conversing in a mix of Arabic and English and wearing traditional Palestinian keffiyeh scarves, when Eaton opened fire on them.

    The attack came just one month after the outbreak of the 2023 Israel-Gaza war, a period that documented national and international monitoring organizations have confirmed saw a sharp surge in anti-Palestinian hate, Islamophobia, and antisemitic incidents across the United States. The shooting left Awartani permanently paralyzed from the waist down, while Aliahmad and Abdalhamid recovered from non-fatal gunshot wounds.

    Eaton never disputed that he fired the shots that struck the three students, but he entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. His defense team told the court that Eaton had experienced a severe psychotic breakdown following his unexpected layoff from a local credit union just weeks before the attack. Defense attorneys argued that Eaton had developed delusions that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Israeli intelligence agency Mossad were sending him instructions to commit violence through local radio broadcasts, claiming their client believed he was following orders from a government body or a divine power.

    The week-long trial drew significant national attention, drawing testimony from all three surviving victims, as well as competing psychiatric evaluations from experts retained by both the prosecution and the defense. When the jury foreperson read the guilty verdict in the Burlington courtroom, multiple witnesses reported that Eaton remained motionless and stared blankly ahead. Awartani, who attended the trial in a wheelchair, and Aliahmad were observed smiling and embracing their loved ones in the courtroom after the verdict was announced.

    Eaton is now scheduled to appear for sentencing at a later date, where he faces the possibility of multiple consecutive life sentences behind bars.

  • Erdogan and Burnham to meet for first time at UN General Assembly in New York

    Erdogan and Burnham to meet for first time at UN General Assembly in New York

    As world leaders gather in New York for the annual United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), a high-stakes bilateral meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the United Kingdom’s new Prime Minister Andy Burnham is set to kick off on the first day of UNGA’s general debate this Tuesday. This encounter will mark the first face-to-face interaction between the two leaders since Burnham assumed office in July, coming at a moment of shifting global diplomatic dynamics, particularly in the Middle East.

    The meeting takes place just weeks after the UK government implemented new economic sanctions targeting illegal Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, an action that included a formal accusation that Israel’s current administration has intentionally overlooked what UK officials described as ongoing “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinian communities by extremist settler groups. This regional policy shift from the UK adds an unscripted layer of geopolitical context to the bilateral discussions, as Turkey has long maintained strong diplomatic and public support for Palestinian statehood.

    Against this regional backdrop, bilateral relations between Ankara and London have warmed considerably over the past 18 months. Turkish and UK officials have repeatedly characterized the current bilateral relationship as “excellent,” a shift that followed Ankara’s landmark decision last year to finalize a multibillion-dollar purchase of Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets from a UK-led consortium.

    The deepening of cooperation has unfolded through a series of formal agreements this year. Back in April, the two countries signed a broad Strategic Partnership Framework, designed to formalize closer dialogue and collaborative action across sectors as NATO allies and committed strategic partners. This foundational agreement was followed by a dedicated security and defence partnership pact signed in July on the margins of the NATO summit hosted in Ankara. A senior Turkish official speaking to Middle East Eye at the time of the signing confirmed that the agreement binds both nations to mutual support across all defence-related priorities, including integrated defence industrial collaboration, counterterrorism coordination, collective response to hybrid threats, and joint cybersecurity initiatives.

    Beyond the high-profile meeting with Burnham, Erdogan has packed his New York schedule with a series of key bilateral engagements with global and regional leaders. Erdogan arrived in New York on Sunday to prepare for the week of diplomacy. On Monday, he is scheduled to hold talks with Mohamed al-Menfi, chairman of Libya’s Presidential Council, as well as Kuwait’s Crown Prince Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Sabah. After his opening day meeting with Burnham on Tuesday, Erdogan will hold his first bilateral meeting with newly inaugurated Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. Wednesday will bring meetings with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Zayid, respectively. Sources familiar with the internal planning of Erdogan’s trip note that additional bilateral meetings with other global heads of state could still be added to the itinerary, including a potential last-minute pull-aside encounter with former US President and current 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump.

  • Carney condemns Yom Kippur shooting outside Canadian synagogue

    Carney condemns Yom Kippur shooting outside Canadian synagogue

    A brazen shooting outside a Jewish place of worship in Ontario, Canada has left a police officer in critical condition, igniting widespread cross-party condemnation of antisemitic violence and prompting stepped-up security for Jewish communities across the region. The violent incident unfolded Sunday evening outside the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville, a city roughly 187 kilometers northeast of Toronto, coinciding with Yom Kippur—the most sacred day on the Jewish religious calendar, when hundreds of Jewish worshippers gather annually for prayer and reflection.

    According to official statements from Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU), the independent watchdog that probes officer-involved shootings, a suspect armed with a shotgun opened fire on a law enforcement officer who was posted outside the synagogue. Two officers returned fire in the exchange, with investigators confirming that roughly 20 to 30 rounds were discharged during the confrontation. The encounter left both the suspect and the targeted officer in life-threatening condition; as of Monday, the officer remained in critical but stable condition, while the suspect’s health status has not been updated beyond confirmation that his injuries are severe.

    When pressed by reporters on whether authorities are treating the incident as a terrorist attack, SIU spokesperson Kristy Denette acknowledged that “common sense would say that probably was the case.” Investigators have not yet released a formal confirmed motive, nor have they explicitly confirmed that the synagogue was intentionally targeted, but the timing and location of the attack have led political leaders across Canada to label it an act of antisemitic violence.

    Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was among the first top officials to issue a public rebuke of the violence, writing on social media platform X that “Jewish people must be able to worship safely, to live free, open, proud Jewish lives.” His condemnation was echoed by Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who stated he was “disgusted” by the shooting, emphasizing that members of Canada’s Jewish community “have every right to gather and worship safely and without fear.”

    Pierre Poilievre, leader of Canada’s Official Opposition, also weighed in, calling for urgent government action to address the rise of hate-fueled violence. “This vile antisemitic violence in Canada must end,” Poilievre wrote on social media, urging Prime Minister Carney’s administration to “act now to protect our people.”

    In response to the attack, local law enforcement has moved quickly to bolster community security. Belleville Police Service Deputy Chief Sheri Meeks announced that the department has increased patrols across the city, with a sustained heightened security presence posted near all houses of worship. Toronto Police Service, which serves Canada’s largest city located less than 200 kilometers from Belleville, also announced Sunday night that it would add extra patrols outside synagogues and other religious sites “out of an abundance of caution.”

    As of Monday, both the Belleville Police Service and the SIU are continuing their parallel investigations into the incident, with authorities yet to release the identities of the suspect or the injured officer, or share additional details about the suspect’s potential background or ideological ties. The attack comes amid a documented rise in antisemitic incidents across North America in recent years, prompting renewed calls for improved security and stronger action to combat religious hate.

  • Netanyahu tours tunnels beneath Al-Aqsa as Ben Gvir raids Jerusalem holy site

    Netanyahu tours tunnels beneath Al-Aqsa as Ben Gvir raids Jerusalem holy site

    As the Jewish high holiday season kicked off last weekend, a series of provocative Israeli visits and incursions into the sensitive Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem have stoked widespread regional and international anger, reigniting debates over the fragile decades-old status quo governing the contested holy site.

  • Pro-Israel think tank urges Israel to weaponise US interdependence amid falling support

    Pro-Israel think tank urges Israel to weaponise US interdependence amid falling support

    Against a backdrop of plummeting public support for Israel across the United States and growing global backlash over its military campaign in Gaza, a prominent Washington-based pro-Israel think tank has laid out a controversial plan to protect Israel from potential international sanctions by weaving the country closer into the United States’ military, technological, intelligence, and economic frameworks. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), founded in 2001 with the explicit goal of boosting Israel’s image in North America and funded by high-profile pro-Israel American donors, says deeper integration would make any future sanctions against Israel too costly for the U.S. to implement, effectively sanction-proofing the Israeli state.

    FDD CEO Mark Dubowitz outlined the proposal earlier this month, warning that the same financial sanctions infrastructure the U.S. built over two decades to pressure Iran could eventually be turned against Israel as shifting public opinion erodes Israel’s long-held political protection in Washington. “For two decades, the United States built a formidable financial warfare machine designed to cripple Iran. Ironically, parts of that same machinery are now being assembled against Israel,” Dubowitz argued in his analysis.

    He drew a direct parallel to the Iran sanctions model, noting that the campaign against Tehran worked not just because of official government restrictions, but because private financial institutions overcomplied with sanctions to avoid angering Washington. “The model used against Iran was devastating because it operated like a steadily tightening noose,” Dubowitz warned. “Sanctions set the process in motion, but the real damage was inflicted by banks and investors who, fearful of incurring Washington’s wrath, went far beyond what US law actually required.”

    This warning comes amid a dramatic shift in U.S. public opinion toward Israel since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023. Recent polling from Pew Research Center shows that six in 10 Americans now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53% in 2023 and just 42% in 2022. This decline in support crosses party lines: even among younger Republicans, 57% now view Israel unfavorably, and for the first time in decades, more Americans sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis.

    Dubowitz acknowledged that this shift in public sentiment is already eroding Israel’s political capital in Washington. “Israel’s political shield is also eroding,” he wrote, noting that U.S. politicians increasingly feel free to take tougher stances on Israel than they have in previous generations. He outlined a worst-case scenario for Israel: a future U.S. president hostile to Israeli interests takes office, the U.S. ends its automatic diplomatic shield for Israel at the United Nations, and both European and American sanctions are imposed. In that scenario, Dubowitz argued, Wall Street’s overcompliance with sanctions would deliver the final blow to Israel’s economy, just as it did to Iran’s.

    To prevent this outcome, Dubowitz is calling for a fundamental deepening of bilateral ties, binding the two countries’ core security and economic systems so closely together that any action targeting Israel would automatically impose significant costs on the United States itself. “If that bond is tight enough, no U.S. administration would be able to impose meaningful sanctions because the economic and political fallout for America would be too great,” he argued.

    The FDD, which says its mission includes strengthening U.S. national security, was founded by wealthy pro-Israel donors Leonard Abramson, Michael Steinhardt, and Edgar Bronfman, with major past funding from other prominent pro-Israel philanthropists including Bernard Marcus, Paul Singer, and the late Sheldon Adelson, who collectively poured millions of dollars into the organization’s work.

  • Singing lemurs use opera technique, study finds

    Singing lemurs use opera technique, study finds

    For years, an international team of researchers spanning the United Kingdom, Italy, and Madagascar has worked to unlock the mysteries of one of nature’s most unique vocalists: the singing indri lemur. Now, their long-running investigation has yielded a surprising discovery that blurs the line between human trained performance and wild animal communication: the endangered Madagascan primate uses the same core vocal technique that professional opera singers rely on to project their voices across large concert halls.

    Led by researchers from the University of Warwick in the UK and the University of Turin in Italy, in collaboration with local partners in the lemurs’ native Madagascar, the new study marks the first time scientists have ever documented this specific level of vocal tract coordination in a non-human primate. To collect their data, the team captured 83 high-resolution video recordings of 19 wild indri individuals, then deployed precision motion-tracking technology to map subtle changes in the primates’ lip and jaw position as they sang. Frame-by-frame analysis confirmed a clear, consistent pattern: every time an indri shifted to a higher pitch, it widened its mouth opening in lockstep, just as a trained human soprano adjusts her vocal tract to hit high notes.

    This coordinated adjustment is called formant tuning, a technique well-known among professional vocalists that amplifies sound frequencies to boost projection and power. For indri lemurs, which live in Madagascar’s dense, thickly forested canopies, this adaptation serves the same core purpose it does for human singers: helping their loud, distinctive songs travel farther across dense vegetation to communicate with other lemur groups across large distances.

    Dr. Chiara De Gregorio, an honorary research fellow at the University of Warwick and a lead member of the study team, emphasized how unexpected the finding was. “We typically associate this fine-tuned coordination between vocal output and body movement with trained human singers, not wild lemurs calling from the forest canopy,” De Gregorio explained. “But frame by frame, we could clearly see that every rise in pitch was matched by a wider mouth opening — it was completely consistent across all the individuals we studied.”

    The research builds on years of work into indri lemur singing behavior that aims to shed new light on the evolutionary origins of human music. A 2025 study from the same research group already revealed that young indri lemurs learn to sing through practice and social learning, a developmental pattern that mirrors how human children acquire language and musical skill.

    While humans and indri lemurs share a distant common ancestor that lived roughly 74 million years ago, the research team notes that the similar formant tuning technique evolved independently in both lineages, a striking example of convergent evolution for effective long-distance communication.

    This discovery not only deepens scientific understanding of primate communication but also opens new avenues of research into the deep evolutionary roots of musical ability across species.

  • Paramount settles lawsuit with US states, helping clear way for $110bn merger with Warner Bros

    Paramount settles lawsuit with US states, helping clear way for $110bn merger with Warner Bros

    After months of legal gridlock that threatened to derail one of the largest media mergers in recent history, Paramount Skydance has reached a settlement with a coalition of U.S. states led by California, eliminating the most significant barrier to its proposed $110 billion combination with Warner Bros Discovery.

    The legal challenge, launched by state regulators, centered on serious concerns that the merger would stifle market competition across the film, television and broadcast sectors, leaving fewer options for creators, industry workers and consumers. California, the epicenter of the U.S. entertainment industry, led the charge against the deal, but the resolution reached this week has resolved state officials’ core objections — without granting explicit approval of the transaction.

    At a press conference announcing the deal, California Attorney General Rob Bonta emphasized that the settlement does not equate to an endorsement of the merger. “I don’t think these two companies should merge,” Bonta clearly stated, adding that the negotiated commitments secured through the lawsuit address the most harmful risks the combination would have posed to competition and industry growth.

    Under the terms of the settlement, Paramount Skydance has agreed to strict production requirements designed to boost domestic entertainment output in the U.S. The company is mandated to release a minimum of 30 feature films annually, with domestic production requirements ramping up over the first five years of the agreement: 20% of all film production must take place within the U.S. for the first two years, rising to more than 30% for the subsequent three years. Bonta projected that these requirements will add between $300 million and $1.5 billion in new investment to U.S. film and television production as a baseline, a figure that could jump by as much as 700% if Congress approves an expanded federal film tax credit. Contrary to common concerns that large media mergers lead to layoffs and industry contraction, Bonta argued the settlement’s terms will actually create new jobs across the entertainment sector, putting unemployed industry workers back to work.

    The settlement comes after tense negotiations that included a threat from Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison to relocate the company’s core studio operations out of California, a move that would have cost the state billions in economic activity and thousands of jobs. Now that the legal challenge has been resolved, and concerns raised by state attorneys general and the Writers Guild of America have been addressed, the merger has full regulatory clearance to move forward.

    Ellison celebrated the resolution in a public statement, framing the outcome as a win for all stakeholders across the entertainment ecosystem. “Our shared aim was an outcome that best serves consumers, workers and — most importantly — the creative community so vital to the art of visual storytelling,” Ellison said. “We have complete clearance for this merger and look forward to putting these commitments into action.”

    The $110 billion merger, if completed, would reshape the global media landscape, combining two of the biggest players in film production, television content and streaming entertainment into a single industry giant.

  • Iranian military says US preparing to attack again

    Iranian military says US preparing to attack again

    Escalating tensions between Iran and the United States have spiked sharply in recent weeks, after Iran’s top military command issued a stark warning Sunday that it has credible intelligence pointing to an impending new wave of direct American attacks on Iranian territory, ending a months-long period of relatively reduced hostilities between the two nations.

    The alert came from Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the top command body that oversees all branches of Iran’s armed forces. In a formal statement released to the public, the military clarified that any nation that allows the United States to stage offensive operations from its territory, or hosts American military or strategic assets used in an attack, will be held legally and militarily accountable as a direct accomplice to the aggression.

    The current escalation comes on the heels of a deadly pattern of low-intensity conflict that the former Trump administration has sought to frame as something short of full-scale war, arguing that occasional intermittent skirmishes do not meet the threshold of an ongoing active conflict. However, official data and on-the-ground reports confirm that dozens of Iranian civilian lives were lost in American strikes carried out as recently as last month alone.

    In response to previous U.S. military action, Iran has already ramped up its own countermeasures: it has stepped up more precisely targeted strikes against U.S. military and energy infrastructure across the Persian Gulf region, while continuing to exercise unchallenged control over the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic chokepoint through which roughly 20% of the world’s global oil supplies pass every day.

    Alongside military pressure, the United States has dramatically escalated its economic campaign against Iran. Last month, U.S. Treasury Secretary announced the launch of what the agency has dubbed “Operation Economic Outcast,” a sweeping initiative designed to cut off Iran’s access to global financial markets and strangle its international economic activity. New sanctions are now being rolled out multiple times every week, with the most recent action coming this Thursday, when the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added BitBank to its sanctions blacklist. BitBank is a high-priority digital assets venture controlled by prominent Iranian financier Babak Zanjani, and the designation marks one of the first major U.S. sanctions targeting an Iranian digital asset platform.

    Senior officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) have further reinforced Iran’s pledge of harsh retaliation in the event of a new attack, warning that the country will enact sweeping and unprecedented changes to its defensive and counteroffensive strategies. “If the United States goes ahead with a new round of attacks, there will certainly be significant changes in our defence and our counteroffensive,” an IRGC spokesperson said in a recent formal statement.

    “We will introduce new weapons with new capabilities into the battlefield, and the world will be surprised,” the spokesperson added. The statement also signaled a shift in Iran’s targeting approach, noting that “Our targets will not necessarily be the same as before either. We have new targets that have not yet been attacked.”

    This report, originally prepared by independent regional outlet Middle East Eye, provides on-the-ground coverage of ongoing developments across the Middle East and North Africa, with unrivaled independent analysis of shifting regional dynamics.

  • Trump’s ‘sweeping’ ICC sanctions over Netanyahu arrest warrant are imminent: Reports

    Trump’s ‘sweeping’ ICC sanctions over Netanyahu arrest warrant are imminent: Reports

    Multiple major international news outlets have confirmed that the Trump administration is moving forward with unprecedented, full-institution sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC), with a formal announcement expected as early as this week on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly high-level meeting in New York. This escalatory step follows earlier US sanctions targeting individual ICC officials, imposed in retaliation for the court’s 2024 issuance of arrest warrants for senior Israeli leaders over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

    According to reporting from The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which based its account on internal administration documents and anonymous senior US officials, the proposed sanctions will ban nearly all commercial and financial transactions between US entities and the ICC after a six-to-seven-month grace period. The restrictions will cut the court off from US dollar-denominated financial operations, a move that experts and ICC officials warn could effectively cripple the tribunal’s daily activities. Because most global financial activity relies on the US-led financial system, banks typically over-comply with US sanctions to avoid regulatory penalty, amplifying the damage of the new measures.

    Reuters later corroborated the WSJ’s reporting, confirming that full entity sanctions have been fully drafted by the US Treasury Department, though the exact timing of the announcement remains flexible. Under the framework of the sanctions, US citizens and companies will be barred from providing funds, goods, or services to the ICC without explicit approval from the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, with only limited exemptions for communications-related transactions.

    The ICC has long warned that full institutional sanctions would disrupt nearly every core function of the court: from procuring critical IT infrastructure and insurance coverage, to recruiting new investigative staff, to processing routine payroll for dozens of American employees working with the tribunal. These warnings echo longstanding concerns from international law experts that targeting the ICC as an institution rather than just individual officials would constitute a “doomsday scenario” for the court’s ability to operate.

    In response to the looming sanctions, international observers and legal experts have repeatedly called on the European Union to activate its long-dormant Blocking Statute, a regulatory tool designed to shield EU-based entities from the extraterritorial impact of third-country sanctions. If activated, the statute would legally protect EU-based service providers that continue to transact with the ICC, preventing them from being forced to comply with US restrictions that conflict with EU policy. Despite multiple resolutions passed by the European Parliament calling for the statute’s activation in July and September of 2023, the European Commission has yet to trigger the mechanism and has offered no public explanation for the delay.
    Sergey Vasiliev, an international law professor at the Open University of the Netherlands and a leading expert on the ICC, has criticized member states and EU institutions for failing to prepare for this escalation despite advance warning of the Trump administration’s intentions. “States Parties have had ample time to prepare for this and undertake contingency planning,” Vasiliev wrote in a post on X. “Everything must be ready to activate the EU Blocking Statute to shield the ICC from US sanctions targeting it as an institution. The EU Commission and all EU member states that considered this measure premature or too radical must now realise that it can no longer be postponed.”

    This latest round of planned sanctions is the culmination of a months-long campaign by the Trump administration to dismantle the ICC over its investigations into US and Israeli personnel. Washington first imposed sanctions on individual ICC officials last February, starting with then-chief prosecutor Karim Khan, before expanding penalties to two deputy prosecutors and nine judges leading investigations into Palestine and Afghanistan. In August of this year, sanctions were expanded to include ICC president Tomoko Akane and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye. These individual sanctions have been described as a “financial death penalty” for the affected officials, who have been completely cut off from access to basic global financial services.

    In July, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid out the administration’s full agenda in a WSJ opinion piece, announcing a formal US campaign to isolate the ICC globally. Rubio urged all countries to withdraw their membership from the tribunal and warned that Washington would “dismantle it brick by brick” if the court did not alter its activities to align with US demands. Those demands, first revealed by Middle East Eye in December 2023, include requiring the ICC to drop its war crime investigations into Gaza and Afghanistan, and amending the court’s founding document, the Rome Statute, to grant permanent immunity from prosecution to nationals of non-member states such as the United States and Israel. At the ICC’s annual Assembly of States Parties meeting in The Hague last December, member states issued an unprecedented public declaration rejecting these demands and ruled out any amendments to the Rome Statute, without explicitly naming the US.

    The ICC’s 2024 arrest warrants, which triggered the current escalation, targeted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant, and three senior Hamas leaders over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the ongoing conflict in Gaza. The warrants specifically cited the use of starvation as a deliberate method of warfare against Gaza’s civilian population; all three Hamas leaders named in the warrants have since been killed.

    Established in 2002, the ICC is the world’s only permanent international criminal tribunal, mandated to investigate and prosecute the most severe international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression. The court currently maintains more than a dozen active investigations into conflict zones across the globe, including Darfur, Libya, Myanmar, and Ukraine.

    Multiple US-based human rights organizations have already taken legal action to block the Trump administration’s sanctions, arguing that the measures are blatantly unconstitutional and illegal under US law. Last month, four leading groups — the American Friends Service Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, and the Open Society Institute — filed a lawsuit against the administration, arguing that the sanctions force the groups to curtail core human rights and legal work in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments of the US Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The groups note that any individual or organization even loosely associated with ICC cases or officials now faces potential legal repercussions for their work. In July, shortly after Rubio published his op-ed, two additional groups — Democracy for the Arab World Now and the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide — filed a separate suit in federal court in New York seeking an injunction to halt the enforcement of sanctions against entities and individuals that work with the ICC. Middle East Eye has reached out to the US State Department for official comment on the planned sanctions, but has not yet received a response.