September 18, 1976 – Tehran, Iran
Major Parviz Jafari had just finished his evening prayers when the call came through.
"Unidentified flying object over Shemiran. Civilians reporting a bright object. Not a plane. Possibly malfunctioning Soviet tech," the operator crackled.
Jafari, a decorated pilot in the Imperial Iranian Air Force, was known for his calm under pressure. Without hesitation, he grabbed his helmet and ran toward his F-4 Phantom II fighter jet.
The Tehran sky was unusually clear that night. The city below shimmered in warm yellow hues, but something above didn’t belong. A piercingly bright light hovered in the darkness — too stationary for an aircraft, too silent for a helicopter.
Jafari and his wingman took off from Shahrokhi Air Base. “You see that?” Jafari asked as soon as they reached altitude.
“Yes,” the wingman replied. “It’s glowing — like it’s... pulsing.”
As they approached, Jafari’s radar went dead. His communication system crackled and fizzled. The weapons systems jammed. Everything electronic failed — except the engines.
“I’m going blind,” Jafari muttered, gripping the controls. The object, now clearly visible, was unlike anything he had ever seen — a diamond-shaped craft glowing with blue, red, and green hues, completely silent, hovering with an unnatural stillness.
Suddenly, a smaller orb detached from the main object and began to move toward them. Jafari's instincts kicked in — he tried to lock on and fire. Nothing. Systems still dead. The orb grew larger in his cockpit window.
“We’re being pursued!” the wingman shouted, banking sharply. Jafari tried to dive, but the orb mirrored his every move, always staying just out of reach. Then, just as suddenly, it stopped — hovering silently before zipping back to the mothership at impossible speed.
And then... everything returned to normal.
Radar came back online. Radios cleared up. Weapons system rebooted. The only evidence of what they had witnessed was the thumping in their chests.
Jafari steadied his breath. “We’re heading back. Maintain altitude. Log everything.”
As they returned, he noticed the object now moving toward the Caspian Sea. Before it disappeared, it flashed once — a white-hot burst that lit up the entire sky, as if warning them.
The Next Day
At Mehrabad Air Base, high-ranking officials and intelligence officers from SAVAK and even American military liaisons questioned Jafari relentlessly.
“You engaged?”
“Yes.”
“Electronics failure?”
“Yes.”
“Could it have been a Soviet MiG?”
“No. This was not human technology.”
Jafari’s voice was steady, but inside he was rattled. What he had seen challenged everything he believed. As a devout man and a disciplined pilot, nothing in his training could explain what happened.
Later, he met privately with a senior U.S. officer, Colonel Willingham. The American had gray hair, tired eyes, and a calmness that felt too practiced.
“We’ve had incidents like this,” Willingham said in a low voice. “Malfunctions, glowing crafts, orbs. Whatever it is, it can disable our systems at will. But it never attacks.”
“What is it then?”
Willingham paused. “We don’t know. But it watches. And it chooses where and when to appear.”
Thirty Years Later – 2006
Retired General Jafari sat in his Tehran apartment, the same night sky outside, but a different world. The revolution, the war with Iraq, the fall of the Shah — so much had changed. But that night in 1976 still haunted him.
He kept a journal, now filled with sketches of the craft, theories about its propulsion, and dreams he'd had since then. Often, he’d see the orb again — in sleep, in reflections, once even in the clouded window of a train. Each time, he’d feel the same helpless awe.
One night, he received a message — a simple envelope slid under his door. Inside, a photograph: grainy, black-and-white, but unmistakable — the Tehran UFO, mid-air, with a caption in Persian: “We were never alone.”
Jafari stepped out into the night and looked up. The stars shimmered like silent sentinels. A strange peace settled over him. He no longer needed answers. He had seen. He had known.
And somewhere, he believed, they still watched.
Inspired by true events
Note: The 1976 Tehran UFO incident is a real documented case involving Iranian fighter jets and an unidentified aerial phenomenon. This fictionalized retelling is based on those reports but includes speculative elements.