NEWS ANALYSIS : Experts ‘Dumbstruck’ by Iraqi Planes in Iran : Air war: Theories run from mass defection to murky deal that would allow Hussein to use them in later strike.

Iraq and Iran have added a new twist to the labyrinthine politics of the Middle East with the flight of scores of top-line Iraqi aircraft to officially neutral Iran.

What are these two bitter enemies up to?

U.S. analysts say they are “dumbstruck” by this latest surprise, and a frantic effort is under way in official circles to unravel the mystery.

Has a desperate or cagey Saddam Hussein sent his best fighters to an Iranian haven intending to use them against U.S.-led forces in a later battle? Has a significant faction of the Iraqi air force abandoned the regime, choosing safety over loyalty? Or has Iran struck a deal with its erstwhile foe, agreeing to shelter the aircraft for the duration of the war in exchange for later political concessions, arms, cash or other considerations?

A high-level Iraqi delegation was in Tehran just before the Gulf War began, and U.S. officials have not yet deciphered what was discussed or agreed to. The delegation included Baghdad’s minister of transportation and the second-ranking official on the ruling Revolutionary Command Council.

But the escape of Iraqi civilian airliners to two commercial airports in Iran began two days before the war broke out, U.S. officials said.

The flights halted briefly, then the trickle of civilian and transport aircraft became a flood of military jet fighters from a number of Iraqi airfields over the last three or four days, officials said.

U.S. analysts say that whatever the reason behind the exodus of planes, Iran can only gain from the situation, assuming that it maintains neutrality. It could use the aircraft as leverage to wrest concessions from Iraq when the war ends, and it could win the allies’ gratitude--and perhaps credits and more normal relations--if it maintains its promised neutrality.

“I’m dumbstruck by the whole thing, and so is everyone else I’ve talked to,” said one senior U.S. military planner. “I can’t imagine the Iranians giving those planes back.

“The scale makes defections seem very unlikely. It might be plausible if it were 14 or 15 planes, but now we’re dealing with 10% of the Iraqi air force. At that level, one suspects collusion,” the officer said.

“These were not massive defections,” another senior Pentagon official asserted, hinting that the Administration is leaning toward a conclusion that Iran and Iraq have cut some as-yet-murky deal.

Whatever the explanation, analysts say that Iran has little to lose by allowing Iraqi civilian and military planes to sit out the war at its airports.

If Iran keeps its promise to ground the planes, the move helps avoid a spillover of the war into Iran--which would be most likely an air war. It also substantially weakens Hussein’s regime, which Tehran fought long and hard to do during its eight-year war with Iraq in 1980-88.

Although the Bush Administration has no firm evidence of any secret pact between Iraq and Iran, the circumstantial case for some such arrangement is persuasive to a number of experts in and out of government.

They point to the appearance of the Iraqi delegation in Tehran less than a week before the outbreak of war. The Iraqi group was led by Izzat Ibrahim, the No. 2 official on the Revolutionary Command Council, the closest thing Iraq has to a senior policy-making body. Included in the delegation were the deputy prime minister, the minister of state for foreign affairs, the minister of transport and communications, the deputy oil minister and several members of Parliament.

The Iraqis returned to Baghdad on Jan. 10. Four days later, Iraqi Air Lines passenger jets began landing at commercial airports in Tehran, and in Mashad, in far northeastern Iran. Travelers counted between 12 and 18 jets--including Boeing 747s, 727s and 707s--at Mashad and about half a dozen more Iraqi jetliners at Tehran’s international airport.

Then, a week after the war broke out, at least 60 top-line Iraqi fighters began hopscotching across Iraq to air bases close to the Iranian border, then fleeing in small groups to airfields in Iran.

“It’s all very well orchestrated and timed and pre-planned,” one Administration analyst said. “Saddam obviously feels he can’t fight an air war. He’s showing real desperation. It’s fascinating.”

Shaul Bakhash, a political science professor and expert on Iran at George Mason University, agrees that the exodus has to be the result of a deal.

“Given the number, they can’t be pilots seeking asylum. There must be some arrangement,” Bakhash said.

But he acknowledged befuddlement about the terms of the deal, as did every source in and out of government.

“It’s a puzzle why the Iranians would give Saddam assistance, as they’ve been quite firm about Iraq pulling out of Kuwait,” Bakhash said. “What (the Iranians) want is sovereignty over Shatt al Arab (the waterway separating Iran and Iraq). That’s the only other possibility.”

One government specialist on Iran suggested a motive for Tehran’s cooperation with Iraq: access to arms. Iran lost a huge amount of weapons to Iraq during their war. Western embargoes also choked off many weapons imports.

“By hook or by crook, they want arms. Through the back door, under the table, they’ll take them any way they can get them,” this official said. “That’s the only thing they can’t get in quantity or sophistication through middlemen and black marketeers.”

But this official cautioned that his assessment was at best a guess. “Our intelligence (in Iran and Iraq) is limited, to put it politely.”

Perhaps, however, the fugitive aircraft are evidence of an Iraqi military ploy, designed to shelter the planes from allied bombardment at neutral airfields until they can be brought back in a surprise attack.

According to U.S. military officers in Saudi Arabia, some experts believe Iraq moved aggressively to disperse as many as 100 warplanes in order to prepare for a major preemptive air and ground strike against allied forces.

In what some said is a theory gaining increasing acceptance, Iraq may be reserving its warplanes in order to launch a second phase of the war in which it would use the aircraft to bombard American troop columns and supply trains as they maneuver inside Saudi Arabia.

But either scenario would require that Iran renege on its pledge--and its obligation as a neutral nation--to keep the aircraft and pilots grounded for the duration of the war.

Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of U.S. forces in Operation Desert Storm, told reporters in Riyadh that the U.S. government “should take Iran at its word,” but added that the military has “contingencies that will take care” of the Iraq aircraft should they re-enter the conflict from Iranian bases.

“We would be absolutely not worth our salt as military people if we ignored the fact that those planes could fly back out of Iran after us,” Schwarzkopf said.

Some experts still hold to the possibility of a mass defection, either coordinated or snowballing from a few early deserters.

When the first seven Iraqi fighters flew across the border, the Iranians sent up some interceptor jets, leading U.S. officials to believe that the Iranians had not been told in advance of the exodus.

Hans-Heino Kopietz, senior Mideast analyst at the London-based consulting firm of Control Risk Information Service, said he subscribes to the defection hypothesis because Iraqi pilots consider themselves professionals first and instruments of the regime last.

“It ties into the theory that I’ve had for some time--that the Iraqi military is intrinsically nationalistic, not party-oriented. The more you get to the elite in the Iraqi military, like pilots, the more nationalist you are, and you don’t become a party hack.

“They also may have concluded that they were in an impossible fight against superior forces,” Kopietz said. “They may have said, ‘I’m taking my aircraft to safe haven. After this regime dies, I’d like to have my air assets intact.’ ”

But other analysts dismiss the possibility of mass defections by both civilian and military aircraft to Iran, in part because it is unlikely that all of the pilots would have chosen to seek refuge in Iran, where their fate would be uncertain at best. Analysts suggest they could have flown instead to friendly Jordan--as a number of Iraqi pilots did during the Iran-Iraq War, or even surrendered to allied forces in Turkey or Saudi Arabia.

Another disincentive for defection is that if Saddam Hussein were to have learned of it in advance, the pilots would have been summarily shot.

Times staff writer Douglas Jehl in Saudi Arabia contributed to this report.