by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In the September 20, 1976, Tehran Journal out of Iran, there is the article (page 27 of the pdf) headlined “UFO – Phantoms in Chase Over South Tehran.” According to the report, officials in the control tower at Mehrabad Airport spotted an object at about 6000 feet over the southern section of Tehran that was alternately flashing red, blue, and green lights. They alerted the Air Force, and two Phantom jet fighters were sent up to investigate. The events that reportedly followed became of great interest, not only to the UFO community, but to the United States Department of Defense as well.

As the pilots approached what they described as a “round body,” the UFO increased its speed to “many times the speed of sound,” changed course, and chased the jets. One of the pilots reported that the object was impossible to catch, even with them breaking the sound barrier.

More information came from the Ettela’at reporter who broke the story who said that “highly informed sources” told him that when the object was heading towards the jets, the pilots went to fire on it and found that their “electronically operated devices failed to respond.” According to the same sources, when the object was within 5 km of the jets, all the electronics failed, including the radios.

After the UFO briefly chased the jets, it broke off and went out of sight south of Rey. One of the pilots reported seeing a “bright object” about 4.5 meters in circumference break off from the original object and fall into the hills. The Gendarmerie in the area conducted an all-night search, and there were conflicting reports as to whether or not they had found anything. Backing up the pilot accounts, nearby residents reported seeing a bright object fall.

After this account, a report from April is presented of an object surrounded by purple and blue lights landing in a deserted area followed by a report by a man from Chalus who said he was “whisked aboard a flying saucer and carried off to Isfahan.” “Dozens” of witnesses reportedly saw a strange object in the area that same day. The September 25, 1976, Tehran Jornal has the article (page 27 of the pdf) headlined “‘I was Taken Inside the Flying Saucer,’ the Man Claims” about a man who was emboldened by the Air Force report to come forward with his claim that he had encountered “two beings similar in shape to Egyptian mummies” who came out of a round object four to five meters wide.

In the September 21, 1976, Kayhan International there is the article (page 28 of the pdf) headlined “The Air Force and the Bright Thing in the Sky” that claims to have “the REAL story about that UFO” from “an official source.” According to the “source,” calls from people reporting a bright light in the sky were received at the Mehrabad Airport control tower, two jets were scrambled, and the pilots reported seeing an object with a light so bright it lit up the ground below. The object then vanished, and that was the end of the incident. The “source” emphasized that the object didn’t chase the jets and that there was no report of red, green, and blue lights; no attempt to open fire; and no failure of the jets’ electronics. He did concede that what the pilots encountered remained a mystery.

This was not to be the final word on the case. The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena published an account of the incident in the November 1976 UFO Investigator. According to Brad Sparks in his entry in the NICAP RADCAT Case Directory report headed “Iranian F-4 Phantom Jet Chase, Radar/Visual/E-M/IAD Signal,” the account in the UFO Investigator “was based on the leak of the teletype message by then Major Roland B. Evans who later wrote the DIA Evaluation of the incident.”

Fran Ridge wrote the summary of the incident, and he quotes from the 1984 book Clear Intent by Lawrence Fawcett and Barry Greenwood:

“One individual, Charles Huffer, a teacher at the Berlin American High School in Germany, attempted to locate information from the files of the Secretary of Defense relating to the Iranian report. They denied this request in a July 5, 1977, letter. Huffer appealed the decision and finally obtained the release of a three-page message about the report on August 31, 1977, via the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).”

There is a link (one of the few still working) to a transcript of the message posted by Ridge, and that contains links to copies of the actual pages. A version with a full distribution list can be seen at The Black Vault, and it includes the White House, Secretary of State, Joint Chiefs of Staff, NSA, and CIA.

According to the report, with a Department of Defense Joint Chiefs of Staff Message Center letterhead, at 12:38 a.m. on September 19, 1976, the Imperial Iranian Air Force command post received four calls from residents of the Shemiran area of Tehran who reported seeing something unusual in the sky described by some as a bird-like object and others as a helicopter with a light. There were no helicopters airborne at the time, and a call was made from the command post to Assistant Deputy of Operations B. G. Yousefi.

After Yousefi had “told the citizen it was only stars,” he spoke to someone at the Mehrabad Airport tower. He then went to see for himself, saw what looked like a star except that it was “bigger and brighter,” and made the decision to scramble an F-4 from Shamrokhi AFB.

At 1:38 a.m., the F-4 took off and approached the object. When it got to within 25 km, the instruments and communications failed. The pilot turned around and flew back to the base. There is this speculative account of the F-4 returning to normal operational condition in the report: “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.”

At 1:48 a.m., another F-4 was sent up, and the “backseater” got a radar lock on the object. When they got to within 25 km, the object began to move and maintained the 25 km distance. The radar showed the object to be about the size of a 707, but it was too bright for a visual determination of its size to be made. The light came from a strobing rectangular pattern of red, blue, green, and orange lights going on and off so fast that all the colors could be seen at the same time.

As the object moved with the F-4 following, an object “estimated to be one-half to one-third the apparent size of the moon” came out of the original object and headed towards the F-4 at a high rate of speed. The pilot went to fire a missile at it, but the weapons control panel went dead along with the communications. The pilot turned and dove, and the object moved to the inside of the turn and then rejoined the original object.

Shortly after this, another object dropped out of the original at a high speed. By this time, the F-4 had regained its systems, and the men watched the new object as it descended. They expected an explosion, but instead, the object settled on the ground and lit up an area of around 2-5 km. They went down to an altitude of 26-15 m, marked the position of the object, and then went to Mehrabad to land.

After circling Mehrabad waiting for their eyes to readjust to the dark, they went out and came in for a straight landing repeatedly. They experienced UHF interference, and each time they came through a magnetic bearing of 150 degrees from the airport, they lost their communications, “and the ins fluctuated from 30 degrees – 50 degrees.” A civilian aircraft in the same vicinity during this time also experienced communications failure. Finally, while on a long approach, they noticed a cylindrical object “about the size of a T-Bird at 10 m” with a bright steady light at each end and a flashing light in the middle. The tower reported there was no traffic in the area, and then a visual was made when the pilot told the controllers where to look.

The F-4 crew was taken by helicopter to the site where they had seen the landed object, and they found nothing. When they were west of the area, “they picked up a noticeable beeper signal,” and when the return was the loudest, they landed next to a small house. They asked the residents if they had “noticed anything strange last night,” and the people there reported a loud noise and a bright light. The landing area and the plane were believed to have been checked for radiation.

The report ends with this: “Actual information contained in this report was obtained from source in conversation with a sub-source, and IIAF pilot of one of the F-4s. More information will be forwarded when it becomes available.” According to John Greenewald in the section headed “Unresolved Questions” in the Black Vault account (updated July 31, 2025), “no subsequent report has surfaced.”