The Tehran UFO Incident

Summary

In the early hours of 19 September 1976, two Imperial Iranian Air Force F-4 jets were sent after a bright light over Tehran, and both crews reported losing instruments or weapons as they closed on it. The planet Jupiter, meteors and faulty equipment have been proposed, and none of these explanations has been confirmed.

The case is known from a US message based on the crews' debriefing, and from a Defense Intelligence Agency evaluation that called it "a classic". Neither says what the light was.

What is documented

The message. The account comes from a US message on the incident, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the researcher Charles Huffer and published by the International UFO Reporter; the National Security Agency now hosts a copy. It records what the Iranian crews and officers reported. Brian Dunning's Skeptoid account traces it to a memorandum for record written by Lieutenant Colonel Olin Mooy of the US Air Force after a debriefing of the crews.

The calls. At about 00.30 local time on 19 September, the message says, four people living in the Shemiran area of Tehran telephoned to report "strange objects in the sky". Some described a kind of bird; others a helicopter with a light on.

The first jet. At 01.30 an F-4 took off and headed for a point about 40 nautical miles north of Tehran. "Due to its brilliance the object was easily visible from 70 miles away." At a range of 25 nautical miles the crew "lost all instrumentation and communications (UHF and intercom)". They broke off, and when they turned away the systems came back.

The second jet. At 01.40 a second F-4 took off, flown by Parviz Jafari according to later accounts. The weapons officer locked his radar on at 27 nautical miles; as the range closed to 25, the object moved away and stayed at 25. The return was "comparable to that of a 707 tanker". The light was of "flashing strobe lights arranged in a rectangular pattern and alternating blue, green, red and orange in color." A second object came out of the first and headed straight for the jet "at a very fast rate of speed". The pilot tried to fire an AIM-9 missile, but "at that instant his weapons control panel went off" and he lost communications; he turned and dived away. The message then describes an object that "appeared to come to rest gently on the earth and cast a very bright light over an area of about 2-3 kilometers". An airliner approaching Mehrabad airport reported a communications failure in the same area. On final approach the crew saw another object, cylinder-shaped, with lights at each end and a flasher in the middle.

The search. In daylight the crew were flown by helicopter to where the object had apparently landed, a dry lake bed. "Nothing was noticed" there. Nearby they picked up a beeper signal, loudest at "a small house with a garden". The message says the aircraft and the site were being checked for radiation. The registry has found no record of the results.

The DIA evaluation. A Defense Intelligence Agency evaluation attached to the report, released under the Freedom of Information Act, called it "An outstanding report. This case is a classic which meets all the criteria necessary for a valid study of the UFO phenomenon." Its criteria were that the object was seen by several witnesses from different places, that many witnesses were credible, that visual sightings were confirmed by radar, that three aircraft reported similar electromagnetic effects, that some crew suffered physiological effects, and that the objects showed "an inordinate amount of maneuverability". It is a rating of the report as a case for study. It does not identify the object.

The sky that night. When the calls came in, at about 00.30, Jupiter was the brightest natural light in Tehran's sky, about 39 degrees above the eastern horizon at magnitude -2.4; the Moon had not risen and Venus was below the horizon. By 01.30 Jupiter stood 51 degrees up in the east-south-east. A crescent Moon rose in the east-north-east at about 00.52, and Sirius at about 01.44. These positions are the registry's calculation, for Tehran on Iran's then clock time of UTC plus 3 hours 30 minutes.

The later accounts. The pilot of the first jet made no known official report until a 1994 television appearance, according to Dunning.

Leading explanations

Jupiter for the bright light (proposed by the journalist Philip Klass and the space writer James Oberg; supported by Dunning; plausible for the light, untested for the rest). Jupiter was the brightest object in the sky when the calls began and was visible from anywhere around Tehran. A planet cannot return a radar echo or throw off a second object, so on its own it does not account for the radar lock or the manoeuvres.

Equipment faults and radar misreading (Klass, from American contractors at Shahrokhi air base; secondhand, and the aircraft's maintenance records have not been published). As Dunning summarises Klass, a Westinghouse technician said only one of the two jets was reported to have had electrical problems during the flight, a McDonnell Douglas technician said that aircraft had a long history of intermittent electrical outages the Iranian air force had never fixed, and both said the base was known for poor work and poor record keeping. The McDonnell Douglas technician also suggested the weapons officer "could have been in manual track or something like that".

Meteors (Dunning, 2012; untested). Citing the meteor researcher Gary Kronk, Dunning notes that 19 September falls at the peaks of the Gamma Piscid and Southern Piscid showers, which he suggests could account for rapidly moving bright objects.

Something unexplained (the reading of those who take the report at face value; the DIA evaluator rated the report highly but identified nothing). No physical trace was found at the reported landing site.

Current status

Unsolved. Klass's explanation fits several parts of the record: Jupiter was the brightest light in the sky when the first calls came in, and contractors told him that one of the aircraft had a history of electrical faults. But the fault evidence rests on what the contractors told Klass, not on published maintenance or radar records, and Jupiter does not explain the radar lock or the manoeuvres. No part of the case is settled by documents, and no explanation has prevailed.

The Iranian air force's maintenance and radar records, the full Mooy memorandum, or the results of the radiation checks would change this entry.

Last reviewed: September 2026. Records are provisional. Where the evidence changes, the entry changes. Found an error? Tell us.