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The Trump administration wants to dismantle the International Criminal Court.Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted a video message to X Monday saying that the ICC has turned into something “radical and extreme” and that the U.S. will now target the court.“As we speak, the ICC and its friends are waging a war against our ​country, not with bullets and missiles but ​with statutes, compacts, and the force of ⁠so-called international law,” Rubio said in the video.The International Criminal Court seeks to become the unaccountable arbiter of a new global law — empowered to prosecute and arrest our citizens at will and existentially threaten American sovereignty.We will teach the ICC the full meaning of American resolve. pic.twitter.com/2egHK1jA98— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) July 13, 2026In addition to the post, Rubio wrote an op-ed column for The Wall Street Journal accusing the court and its allies of seeking “a standing world tribunal with near-unlimited reach, empowered to override the courts and constitutions of the U.S. and other sovereign states—and to prosecute and arrest our citizens.“The ICC is backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.,” Rubio’s column added.Reuters spoke to an anonymous State Department official who said that the Trump administration is considering a variety of tactics, including travel bans, visa revocations, increased sanctions against the ICC and its affiliates, and diplomatic pressure on countries to withdraw from the ICC.“No diplomatic option will be off-limits in the campaign ​to dismantle the threat posed by the ICC to Americans,” the State Department said in a statement.The U.S. has never been a member of the ICC, and President Trump attacked the court after it issued arrest warrants against Israeli government leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in 2024 for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Since then, the U.S. has sanctioned court officials and prosecutors, as well as other international leaders who document and speak out about Israel’s crimes, including United Nations Special Rapporteur for Palestine Francesca Albanese.The Trump administration’s new push is not only based on support for Israel (whose Gaza massacre was largely conducted with American weapons) but also on the possibility of ICC charges being issued against the U.S. During Trump’s second term, the U.S. has launched strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, which it claims are bringing drugs to the U.S.In effect, the administration sees the ICC as a threat to its ability to launch military activities around the world whenever it wants, and as a threat to Israel. Trump and Rubio think that the U.S. is above any international criticism and checks on its military power, war crimes be damned.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has announced that he will vote against Representative Thomas Massie’s measure to cut off all aid to Israel—even though it’s a policy that the vast majority of Democratic voters agree with.“I will be voting no on Republican Amendment #8.… It is overly broad in that it prohibits or would limit the use of funds for longstanding initiatives related to humanitarian aid, refugee resettlement, peace-building and U.S. Embassy operations,” Jeffries wrote in a letter to his Democratic colleagues Tuesday. “In addition, the so-called Massie amendment would restrict our country’s ability to confront Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations in the region who are sworn enemies of both the United States and Israel. In my view, there are more decisive ways to achieve the urgent change necessary when it comes to the far-right Netanyahu government.”In his letter, Jeffries noted that the liberal organization J Street also opposed the measure. In response, the Jewish group hedged its opposition, saying it supports Jeffries’s position while also respecting that he won’t whip against the measure. The group suggested that Democrats could vote “no, present or yes” to reflect their concerns about “the way American military assistance and American-supplied weapons have been used by the Israeli government in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and elsewhere.”Jeffries opposed the amendment while mentioning that the U.S. and Israel need a “new security arrangement” that would “undergird the maintenance of Israel’s qualitative military edge against Iran and other malign actors in the region.”Dozens of Democrats are expected to vote for the amendment, which would be attached to the spending bill.Jeffries’s letter reveals the ideological gap between party leadership and the party’s base. The second-most-powerful Democrat in the country thinks that cutting off aid to Israel—which has been committing a genocide against Palestinians for nearly three years—is too extreme, and that the problem lies solely with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and not the decades of apartheid that preceded his nonconsecutive 20 years in leadership.This isn’t just coming from congressional Democrats. California Governor and 2028 presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom refused to call Israel an apartheid state and doubled down on his support for Israel in an interview with Axios on Monday. And even Democratic Representative Ro Khanna—who was just held at gunpoint by Israeli settlers on his trip to the West Bank—stopped short of calling for a full embargo against the Israeli government.“Inexcusable moral failure by the ‘opposition’ party leadership,” Middle East analyst Omar Baddar wrote on X. “If a genocide (sniper bullets in the heads of toddlers, systematically murdered medics & journalists, rape of prisoners … etc.) isn’t a red line, then what the hell is?!”

In a Town Hall Q&A for paid subscribers, Zeteo assembled three Middle East experts to unpack developments in Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza. It’s a conversation you won’t find in the mainstream media.

A decades-old oil pipeline to the Red Sea and prudent fiscal policy are helping the kingdom, according to Tim Callen, former IMF mission chief to the kingdom.

Around 83% of the Gulf’s LNG exports head to Asia, but the Iran war is changing dynamics, prompting importers to cut demand, switch to other suppliers, or turn to other fuels.

The deal follows a thawing of bilateral relations after a years-long diplomatic rift over Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.

The resumption of tit-for-tat strikes between Iran and the US puts President Donald Trump’s goal to slash retail fuel prices further out of reach.

The world is facing an LNG surplus that analysts predict could reach more than 100 million tons by 2031.