1976 Tehran UFO Incident - Opinions of Some Participants

Opinions of Some Participants

In 1994, the Sightings TV program tracked down and interviewed various principals involved in the incident. Nearly all expressed the opinion that they were dealing with a high-technology extraterrestrial craft.

The pilot of the first jet interceptor, Yaddi Nazeri, estimated that the UFO was traveling somewhere between two and three thousand miles per hour. He said that the object "...was beyond my speed and power. The F-4... also could not catch up to the object. That's when I thought, this is a UFO." Nazeri added that "...no country had this type of flying object, so I was thinking, this craft is from another planet."

The second F-4 pilot, General Parviz Jafari, said that after trying to fire a missile and failing, they feared for their lives and tried to eject, but the eject button also malfunctioned. At a Washington D.C. press conference on 12 November 2007, Jafari added details that the main object emitted four objects, one that headed towards him and later returned to the main object a short while later, one which he tried unsuccessfully to fire on, another which followed him back, and one which landed on the desert floor and glowed. Following his prepared statement at the press conference, Jafari was asked if he believed he had encountered an alien spacecraft and Pirouzi said he was quite certain that he had. (see below for further details and references)

General Nader Yousefi, the assistant deputy commander of the Iranian Air Force, said he ordered the two jet interceptions. He said that, "Because of the experience I had on 19 September 1976, I believe there is something up there. We just don't know what it is or where it came from."

Yousefi repeated many of the details of the encounter already recorded in the DIA document but also added a few more. Yousefi said that after the second F-4 lost its communications and weapons systems and took evasive maneuvers, it tried one last pursuit of the UFO. Even approaching at Mach 2, the UFO easily outdistanced it. The pilots decided to return to Mehrabad airport. As they were approaching to land, Yousefi said the control tower phoned him that the UFO was following the jet back to base.

The control tower supervisor, Hossein Pirouzi, told Sightings that the pilot was in a panic with the large UFO on its tail. According to Pirouzi and other controllers, the UFO performed a low-altitude flyby over Mehrabad at about 2200 to 2,500 feet (760 m). It was described as a cylinder-shaped object as large as a tour bus, with bright steady lights on each end and a flasher in the middle. During the flyby, the control tower lost all power, although other parts of the airport were unaffected. After the flyby, the UFO took off to the west and was spotted 25 minutes later over the Mediterranean by an Egyptian Air Force pilot, then again over Lisbon, Portugal by the pilot, crew, and passengers of a KLM flight, reporting that it was speeding westward over the Atlantic Ocean.

The following day, an investigation was held in Tehran. The Iranian Air Force Deputy Commander, Lieutenant General Abdollah Azarbarzin, conducted interviews with all of the principals and wrote up a report. Gen. Jafari, the second F-4 pilot, stated that he was among those interviewed and an American colonel sat there and took notes. This information later appeared in the D.I.A. account of the incident.

Tower controller Pirouzi was also among those interviewed. He recalled a discussion by Azarbarzin's panel at the conclusion of the meeting. "When they heard our report and the report of the pilots, they concluded that no country is capable of such technology, and all of them believed it was a strange object from outer space."

When interviewed by Sightings, Azarbarzin independently confirmed Pirouzi's statement. He said they concluded that the UFO had deliberately jammed both the aircraft and control tower electronics. About the objects that seemed to shoot out of the UFO, Azarbarzin said, "The pilots called them fireballs, but we all thought that they were very powerful waves of electromagnetism, which jammed all the electronics starting from VHF, UHF, fire control system, gun radar, gun communications, everything. Everything was gone."

Azarbarzin also said that the copilot got a good look at the UFO when the second F-4 came out of its emergency dive and passed underneath it. He told both Sightings and researcher Dr. Bruce Maccabee the copilot could see the shape, which he said was round like a plate or just like a saucer, with a canopy or cockpit that looked like half a ball bathed in a dim orange or yellowish light, but with no visible crew.

When all factors were considered, including the extraordinary rate of acceleration displayed by the UFO, Azarbarzin concluded that the UFO had outperformed any known human aircraft.

This conclusion was relayed to General Hatemi, the Shah's personal military advisory, who instructed Azarbarzin to give his report to the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group in Tehran (MAAG). In charge of MAAG and chief U.S. Air Force military advisory to the Iranians was General Richard Secord. Secord declined to be interviewed. Gen. Azarbarzin refused to state publicly whether Secord had seen the report, but another high Iranian Air Force commander, Mamoud Sabahat, told Sightings that he was present in Tehran to attend a meeting on the night of the incident. "This UFO event was the first time in our Air Force's history that anything had happened like this. It would have been a usual and customary part of the military system to put him at that meeting."

Gen. Azarbarzin also told Maccabee that the complete records of the investigation had been turned over to the U.S. Air Force. However, the USAF has steadfastly maintained that their only record of the incident was provided in the DIA document originally prepared by a USAF officer who interviewed the pilot of the second F-4.

About his personal opinion, Gen. Azarbarzin told Sightings, "I believe in UFOs. I cannot ignore their existence. They want to find some way of contacting the people of earth. They are trying, and they are going to do it." Azarbarzin's opinion was echoed by Amir Kamyabipour, former deputy commander of operations in the Iranian Air Force. Because of what he experienced first-hand during this incident, he believes, "UFOs are trying to find some way to make contact with our world. I am positive of this."