1976 Tehran UFO Incident - Miscellaneous Details and Documents

Miscellaneous Details and Documents

In the 1 October 1976 issue of the Iran Times from Washington, D.C., an apparent firsthand account from Lt. Jafari, the pilot of the second jet interceptor, was published, based on a tape of the actual pursuit. The aircraft flew towards Tehran at over the speed of sound. Jafari said that on seeing him coming, the UFO increased its speed. 'It was half the size of the moon as seen from earth,' he said. 'It was radiating violet, orange, and white light about three times as strong as moonlight.'"

Jafari was ordered to return to base if he was unable to get near, and Jafari cut off pursuit. As he was returning, he "told air controllers that the UFO had doubled back on its pursuers, and he was in danger of being forced down. 'Something is coming at me from behind. ...I think it is going to crash into me. It has just passed by, missing me narrowly...' The disturbed voice of the pilot was clear on the tape."

The article also recounted how the pilot spoke of a "bright round object, with a circumference of about 4.5 meters, leave the UFO." It also said that the authenticity of the object had already been confirmed by the two F-4 pilots, several control tower operators, and witnesses on the ground who reported a "bright body" flit across the sky while others reported seeing "some bright thing" fall from the sky.

Another document later came to light revealing that a very similar UFO was sighted in Morocco from many locations about 3 to 4 hours later, or 0100 to 0200 hours local time on 19 September. The document was from the American embassy in Rabat, Morocco to the U.S. State Department, dated 25 September 1976--"Subject: Request for Info. Unidentified Flying Objects." It recounted that the Moroccan police had received numerous reports of an object generally flying parallel to the Atlantic coast at low altitude. It had a silvery luminous circular or tubular shape and was giving off intermittent trails of bright sparks and fragments. It made no noise. One of the embassy's unnamed briefers said he had seen it himself, and that it appeared to be traveling slowly like an aircraft preparing to land. At first it appeared disc-shaped, but took on a tubular appearance as it got closer.

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger responded ten days later and took the official U.S. policy line on UFOs. Kissinger claimed the Condon Committee report had shown that all UFOs could be attributed to natural causes and no further study was warranted. Kissinger said people had probably seen a meteor or a decaying satellite part for which there was no re-entry record. In 2012, amateur satellite observers identified the cause of the Moroccan sightings as the re-entry of the "BOZ ullage motor assembly ejected from the third stage of the Molniya rocket that orbited Molniya 1-35". They produced a ground track plot that shows that the re-entry trajectory passed within sight of all locations from which UFO sightings were reported.

In a search for further information on the case in National Security Agency records, it was also found that an article on the Tehran incident had been written in 1978 (see Gallery) in the classified MIJI Quarterly a periodical published by the Electronics Security Command at San Antonio, Texas. The journal contained narrative summaries of all electronic warfare "meaconing", "intrusion," "jamming," and "interference" incidents (hence the acronym MIJI—see ). The report basically provided the details in the DIA document, but prefaced the article as follows:

"Sometime in his career, each pilot can expect to encounter strange, unusual happenings which will never be adequately or entirely explained by logic or subsequent investigation. The following article recounts just such an episode as reported by two F-4 Phantom crews of the Imperial Iranian Air Force during late 1976. No additional information or explanation of the strange events has been forthcoming: the story will be filed away and probably forgotten, but it makes interesting, and possibly disturbing, reading."