What happened
Shortly after midnight on 19 September 1976, residents of Tehran's Shemiran district phoned Mehrabad tower about a brilliant object in the sky. The controller saw it too, as did an Imperial Iranian Air Force general from his balcony, and an F-4 Phantom was scrambled. As it closed to about 25 nautical miles, its instruments and radios died; they came back when the pilot turned away. A second F-4, flown by Major Parviz Jafari, got a radar lock at 27 miles with a return the size of a large tanker. The object pulled away to hold its distance, flashing coloured lights so fast they blended. Then a smaller bright object separated and came straight at the jet. When Jafari tried to fire a Sidewinder, his weapons panel and communications cut out; he dived away, the small object fell in behind him, then rejoined the main light. Another object dropped toward the ground and seemed to settle, lighting the terrain. A US teletype on the event went to the White House, CIA and DIA, and a copy later surfaced in NSA files.
The original account
When the F-4 turned away from the object and apparently was no longer a threat to it, the aircraft regained all instrumentation and communications. ... [The pilot attempted to fire an AIM-9 missile] but at that instant his weapons control panel went off and he lost all communications (UHF and interphone). At this point the pilot initiated a turn and negative-G dive to get away. As he turned the object fell in trail at what appeared to be about 3-4 nautical miles. As he continued in his turn away from the primary object the second object went to the inside of his turn then returned to the primary object for a perfect rejoin.
US Department of Defense teletype message on the Iran sighting, September 1976, released under FOIA (US government document, public domain)
The official explanation
Philip J. Klass, later echoed by James Oberg, proposed that the crews first chased a bright planet, probably Jupiter, and that the equipment failures were coincidental: Klass reported that a technician said only the first F-4 had failures and that it had a history of electrical faults. A McDonnell Douglas supervisor suggested the radar may have been in a mode that produced a misleading lock. Brian Dunning noted that meteor showers were active that night, which could explain objects seen falling, and the beacon detected at the 'landing' site was attributed by a US officer to a C-141 locator beacon shaken loose by turbulence.
The anomalous case
Few UFO reports have a paper trail this good. The DIA analyst who evaluated it called it outstanding and a classic, citing witnesses including an Air Force general, radar confirmation, and electromagnetic effects. A routing slip found in NSA files listed why it met the criteria for a valid UFO study: credible witnesses, radar confirmation, electromagnetic effects on three separate aircraft (two F-4s and an airliner that reported radio trouble), physiological effects on crew, and an object with an inordinate amount of manoeuvrability. The light was also seen from the ground by a controller and a general, not just by tired aircrew. Jafari, who rose to general, gave a public account of the intercept at a 2007 National Press Club event in Washington, and a version held by the NSA carries an opening note by US Air Force Captain Henry Shields.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Documents
- NSA release: 'Now You See It' and Iran cable official, documents.theblackvault.com
- NSA routing slip on the Iran UFO report official, documents.theblackvault.com
- 1976 Iran incident document set (FOIA) official, theblackvault.com
Sources
- 1976 Tehran UFO incident Wikipedia
- The 1976 Iran Incident: UFO Encounter over Tehran, Iran The Black Vault (FOIA document archive)
- Teheran, Iran, September 19, 1976 Patrick Gross, UFOs at Close Sight
Witness reports elsewhere
These archives can't be republished here, so we link to them instead.