Kidnapping Ahmadinejad

TIME (Middle East Blog)
9/10/08

Kidnapping Ahmadinejad

Tim McGirk

The Iranians are a little peeved. An Israeli cabinet minister hinted darkly that Mossad ought to kidnap their president.

And this threat comes from Rafi Eitan, an ex-Mossad agent who used to strangle people with a piano wire.

No wonder the Iranians are upset. They've probably sent down word to their underground labs to make their uranium-enriching centrifuges spin faster.

What Eitan says is childish, and a lot of Israelis laugh off Eitan as a clown. They roll their eyes when Eitan comes out with zingers like this. But I dug out a quote from Eitan, about his days as a Mossad assassin. "Whenever I killed, I needed to see their eyes, the whites of their eyes. Then I was calm, very focused, thinking only of what I had to do. Then I did it. That was it," Eitan told Gordon Thomas, author of "Gideon's Spies", a history of the Mossad.

Eitan also knows about kidnapping, too. He led the Mossad team in May 1960 that grabbed Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi architect of the dead camps, off a Buenos Aires street and smuggled him back to Israel where he was tried, executed and his ashes were cast out to sea.

The trickiest part wasn't the actual kidnap. It was sneaking Eichmann past the Argentinian guards at the airport so they could board a waiting El Al plane. First they got Eichmann sozzled on an entire bottle of Scotch. "We played the drunken Jews who couldn't handle strong Argentinian liquor. The guards were amused and never gave Eichmann a second look."

Don't think that ploy would work terribly well in Tehran. A drunken Ahmadinejad, howling out songs of unrequited love in the arms of his Israeli kidnappers, might just attract a tiny bit of attention as the getaway car whizzes through Tehran.

Also, there seems to be a lull in classy Israeli kidnappings. During the last Lebanon war, a superbly-executed commando raid netted Hassan Nasrallah, only it wasn't the fugitive Hizballah leader. It was Hassan Nasrallah the green grocer, no relation. Nice try, guys.

Ok, so Eitan's strangler's grip has probably weakened. He's still a tough guy, but he's old, leader of the Pensioners' Party, which did well in the last elections (young, cool Israelis voted for Eitan on a lark) but will probably score zero Knesset seats next time around. This means that Eitan will be unemployed again, and available for nefarious plots and schemes. Trouble is, as a spy he fell into disgrace over the Jonathan Pollard affair, the U.S. naval intelligence specialist arrested in Nov. 1985 and sentenced to life in prison as an Israeli spy.

Don't underestimate the power of Rafi's hands. After carrying out a Mossad job—car-bombings were another specialty—he'd come back to weld and hammer together metal sculptures in his garden. He still sculpts, his hands are sinewy and he may soon be without a job, restless. Sleep well tonight, Mr. Ahmadinejad!