1976 Tehran UFO Incident #1 for Sightings TV

THE WITNESSES BEING INTERVIEWED: General Amir Hossein Rabii, his wingman colonel and both their Radar Intercept Officers/Weapons System Officers (back seat) described to the American CIA after they escaped the Iranian Shi'ite Muslim Revolution of 1979 that he personally scrambled himself and his three flight crew members in two F-4 US manufactured planes after the giant UFO began hovering and overflying the military airport closest to the Shah's residence in downtown Tehran along with all major runways, obstructing air traffic at "zero-dark-thirty." From his own residential balcony, General Rabii observed the UFO skycraft carrier.

This vessel would go on to disrupt air traffic across the entire Middle East after this Iranian airspace encounter to fly on into the skies and air approach corridors of both Cairo, Egypt and Cyprus, all before the sunrise as the planet Earth rotated eastward.

CLIENT: Henry Winkler and Michelle S. Davis, Executive Producers, "Sightings," Paramount Television, 1993 and 1994.

MATERIALS: Illustration rendered with markers, airbrushed India ink, airbrushed F/W ink pigments, Prisma pencils and airbrushable acrylic paints.

Video & Digital Transfer Facility: Wood Holly in Hollywood, California.

FACTS: The 1976 Tehran UFO Incident was a radar and visual sighting of an unidentified flying object (UFO) over Tehran, the capital of Iran, during the early morning hours of 19 September 1976. During the incident, two Imperial Iranian Air Force F-4 Phantom II jet interceptors reported losing instrumentation and communications as they approached the object.

One of the pilots was none other than Amir Hossein Rabii, Sepahbod, Imperial Iranian Air Force. the other pilot was his wingman. Four crewmembers in two planes engaged the bogies in the skies over Tehran. Their flight instrumentation in both aircraft were restored upon withdrawal. The general had to dive away twice after illuminating his UFO target with his attack radar. General Rabii's aircraft also reported a temporary weapons systems failure while the crew was preparing to open fire on their first attempt to engage.
An initial report of the incident was relayed to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff on 19 September 1976. One pilot's report of "bright objects" that "came at him, and that shot straight down into the ground."

Stripped of details, a couple of F4 jets from the Iranian air force were scrambled to investigate some sightings of lights in the sky. Reports vary, but at least one jet suffered grave electrical failures, tried to fire a missile at something and had something fired at it. A nearby jet airliner also suffered radio failure.