1976 Tehran UFO incident

[2][3] Lieutenant Yaddi Nazeri of the Imperial Iranian Air Force (IIAF), plus a backseat weapons officer, were dispatched in an F-4 Phantom II jet interceptor to investigate.

[5] As he approached the object, which Jafari described as "flashing with intense red, green, orange and blue lights so bright that I was not able to see its body," his plane's communications system shut off.

A nearby jet airliner also suffered radio failure.According to U.S. journalist Philip J. Klass, it was likely the pilots initially saw an astronomical body, probably Jupiter, an explanation also cited by aerospace researcher James Oberg.

In addition, Klass points out that radio faults on airliners are not unknown, and that is why they carry backup radio sets.Regarding one pilot's report of "bright objects" that "came at him, and that shot straight down into the ground", American sceptic author Brian Dunning observes that 19 September, the day of the incident, was the height of two annual meteorite showers, the Gamma Piscids and the Southern Piscids and the tail of the Eta Draconids shower, so observation of falling objects or odd lights would not have been unusual.

[8] According to Dunning:[8] Once we look at all the story's elements without the presumption of an alien spaceship, the only thing unusual about the Tehran 1976 UFO case is that planes were chasing celestial objects and had equipment failures.

Once in a while, both will happen on the same flight.Dunning criticized UFOlogists and UFO-themed television programs such as Sightings for describing all the events related to the incident "from the context of a presumption that the light was a hostile and intelligently guided alien spacecraft".

[8] Editorial published in the United States Air Force Security Services quarterly MIJI (Meaconing, Intrusion, Jamming, and Interference) newsletter that is "often waved by the UFOlogists as compelling evidence".