New Delhi: Iranians filmed a mysterious object with bright, multicoloured lights flying over Tehran, prompting speculation on social media.
The footage, reportedly recorded on 20 September, comes exactly 50 years after the famed 1976 sighting of a similar bright object over the Iranian capital, which a US government report described as the sighting of a ‘UFO’.
A ‘UFO’ moment?
The 1976 incident involved Iranian F-4 Phantom fighter jets, which were dispatched after residents reported seeing a bright object in the sky over Tehran. A declassified US government report records that the first F-4 lost its instruments and communications as it approached the object, before a second fighter was sent to investigate.
The second F-4 reportedly established radar contact with the object at a distance of about 27 nautical miles. The report described it as a bright object with flashing lights that alternated between blue, green, red and orange.
The encounter became even more unusual when the pilot, retired Iranian air force general Parviz Jafari, was “nearly blinded by the glare of the object during his approach”, according to a report in the Sarasota Herald Tribune.
“As one of the smaller lights broke from the bigger one and surged toward his Phantom F-4, Jafari attempted to fire a Sidewinder missile, only to discover his controls had shut down,” the report noted Jafari as informing an international panel of pilots and authorities convened by the Coalition for Freedom of Information in November 2007.
There have also been attempts to explain the 1976 incident through more conventional means.
History.com, citing an unclassified US Air Force memo and the work of UFO sceptics, noted that Jupiter was visible that night and could potentially account for the bright object seen by civilians and pilots. It also cited the second F-4’s history of electrical problems as a possible explanation for some of the reported instrument failures. A meteor shower that night was another possible explanation for some of the bright objects described by the pilots.
That 1976 episode remains unexplained and the US report does not establish what the object was. It has never been established if the flying object was extraterrestrial, although the account has since become a staple of UFO literature.
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What is flying over Tehran now?
The latest Tehran videos offer considerably less information.
The footage appears to show a luminous object hovering or moving across the night sky, with several bright colours visible. One post on X placed the latest sighting near Tehran’s Azadegan Expressway.
تهران ، اتوبان آزادگان
29 شهریور حوالی ساعت 19:30
از اجرام ناشناخته آسمانی فیلم گرفتم
واقعا نمیدونم چی هست ولی نزدیک ابرها بود نور های خاصی داشت و بدون هیچ صدایی در فضا معلق بود !!!
لطفا منتشر کنین همه ببینن 🙏 #یوفو #ufo #فضا #ناسا #بشقابپرنده #فرازمینی #تهران #ایران pic.twitter.com/AHfV3FvTEb
— Ali Sedaghati (@AliiiiiSeda) September 20, 2026
But there is little else that can be established from the videos alone. The object’s distance, altitude, speed and size cannot be independently determined from the footage, there is no publicly available radar or flight-tracking data establishing what was filmed.
Iranian authorities, too, have not publicly commented on it to suggest any security threat.
That has led to a range of speculations online. Some users have suggested a drone or a group of drones, while others have pointed to reconnaissance aircraft, kites or other illuminated objects seen from a distance. None of these explanations has been independently established.
A number of videos are circulating showing an unidentified object in the skies above Tehran, Iran, it’s not immediately clear what is being filmed. pic.twitter.com/bHNAQGFPNv
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) September 21, 2026
The latest sighting has also emerged during an especially tense period for Iran. Tehran and Washington exchanged fresh warnings on 20 September, with Iran’s military threatening retaliation against US bases and interests in the region in the event of another attack.
The warnings followed an escalation involving the US, Iran and Iran-aligned Houthi forces.
That context means an unidentified object over Tehran is likely to attract more attention than it might under ordinary circumstances. But for now, the videos establish only that people filmed unusual-looking lights in the Tehran sky.
Fifty years after fighter jets chased an unexplained object over the same city, the latest footage has revived an old mystery. It has not, so far, provided an answer to it.