RAMALLAH: Israeli Pensioners Minister and former Mossad agent Rafi Eitan said in an interview to German magazine Der Spiegel that the same tactics used to capture Nazi Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann could be used to nab Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and haul him before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Calling the era of hunting down and kidnapping Nazi war criminals “over,” Eitan stopped short of dismissing covert operations and kidnapping by one state as an acceptable means to capture the leader of another state for delivery to an international court.

“That era is over. But that’s not to say that such operations are completely a thing of the past,” he said.

“It could very well be that a leader such as Ahmadinejad suddenly finds himself before the International Criminal Court in The Hague ... And all options are open in terms of how he should be brought.”

In 1960, Eitan commanded the Mossad operation that captured Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann in Argentina.

Eichman was the SS-Obersturmbannführer who designed the logistics for the mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and concentration camps in Eastern Europe. After his kidnapping and trial, Eichmann was hanged in 1962 for crimes against humanity.

Asked specifically if kidnapping was an acceptable means of delivery to The Hague, Eitan replied: “Yes. Anyway to bring (Ahmadinejad) for trial in The Hague is a possibility.”

Eitan, a member of Israel’s inner Cabinet of ministers with security responsibilities, said he was expressing his own opinion and nothing more. In Israel’s rough-and-tumble parliamentary system, ministers often speak out without the blessings of the country’s top leadership.

Ahmadinejad is feared and reviled in Israel because of his repeated calls to wipe the Jewish state off the map, his promotion of historical revisionism regarding the Holocaust and his pursuit of nuclear technology.

It is not clear exactly what Ahmadinejad would be charged with at The Hague if he were ever to wind up there.

Critics of the Iranian leader — led by those in Israel and the United States — claim that Ahmadinejad’s comments that Israel should be wiped off the map is tantamount to conspiring to commit genocide, and that his nuclear program is designed specifically for creating the nuclear capabilities to do so.

However, Iran says its nuclear program is for power-generation, and Russia in particular supports Iran’s rights to nuclear power.