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September 18, 1976 – Tehran, Iran
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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As they approached, Jafari’s radar went dead. His communication system crackled and fizzled. The weapons systems jammed. Everything electronic failed — except the engines.
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“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.
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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.
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“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.
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And then... everything returned to normal.
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Radar came back online. Radios cleared up. Weapons system rebooted. The only evidence of what they had witnessed was the thumping in their chests.
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Jafari steadied his breath. “We’re heading back. Maintain altitude. Log everything.”
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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.
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The Next Day
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At Mehrabad Air Base, high-ranking officials and intelligence officers from SAVAK and even American military liaisons questioned Jafari relentlessly.
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“You engaged?”
“Yes.”
“Electronics failure?”
“Yes.”
“Could it have been a Soviet MiG?”
“No. This was not human technology.”
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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.
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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.
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“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.”
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“What is it then?”
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Willingham paused. “We don’t know. But it watches. And it chooses where and when to appear.”
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Thirty Years Later – 2006
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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And somewhere, he believed, they still watched.
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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.
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