UFO déjà vu? Mystery lights over Tehran revive Iran’s famous 1976 sky saga

A brightly lit object spotted over Tehran has sent social media into speculation mode, with videos appearing to show an unidentified object hovering or moving slowly across the night sky. Whether it was a drone, aircraft or something else remains unclear, as Iranian authorities have not publicly identified the object.

The footage has drawn particular attention because it surfaced almost five decades after a widely documented aerial encounter over Tehran involving Iranian fighter jets and an object that was never conclusively identified.

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The latest videos have prompted a range of theories online, from military drones and aircraft to unidentified aerial phenomena. None of the explanations circulating on social media has been independently established.

A mystery Tehran has seen before

The latest sighting echoes an incident recorded on September 19, 1976, when residents in Tehran's Shemiran area reported seeing an unusual bright object in the sky.

A subsequently declassified US government report documented the Iranian Imperial Air Force's response. Two F-4 Phantom fighter jets were dispatched to investigate the object.

According to the report, the first fighter experienced failures involving its instruments and communications while approaching the object. The systems reportedly began working again after the pilot broke away.

A second F-4 was then sent after the object and reportedly detected it on radar. Its crew also described seeing a smaller object emerge from the larger one.

The second pilot attempted to engage the smaller object, but the report said the aircraft's weapons-control system and communications failed at that point. The encounter later became one of the more frequently cited historical UFO cases involving military aircraft.

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From UFO theories to RGB-light jokes

The new footage has revived that history, while online reactions have ranged from speculative to outright playful.

Some users have suggested that the lights could belong to a military drone or several drones flying together. Others have proposed an aircraft or an unidentified aerial phenomenon, but there is no independent confirmation of any of these explanations.

The internet's more imaginative theories have included everything from a flying carpet to decorative LED lights. One commenter jokingly imagined an alien spacecraft covered in colourful lights, while another quipped that aliens had arrived to broker peace between Donald Trump and Iran.

Someone else cut straight to the alleged technology behind the mystery: “Why are aliens using cheap RGB lights?”