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unknown agendas—a truly frightening prospect. But even if pilots feel that self-defense is warranted, such actions could have disastrous consequences if they were ever successful in damaging their target, or if the object did respond aggressively after an attempt to destroy it. The risks in engaging militarily with something this powerful, and completely unknown, are self- evident. No one can predict the behavior of something we don't 1 . 1 o,W aoe saoeae, don't establishing communication with the UFO, if that were possible, or of simply learning more about it through cautious observation at close range. The accounts of Jafari and Santa Maria give the inside stories of what two Air Force pilots experienced when attempting to shoot down a UFO. They had received no training or any preparation for dealing with such an unanticipated eventuality. CHAPTER 9 At about 11:00 p.m. on the evening of September 18, 1976, citizens were frightened by the circling of an unknown object over Tehran at a low altitude. It looked similar to a star, but bigger and brighter. Some called the air traffic control tower at Mehrebad Airport, where Houssain Pirouzi was the night supervisor in charge. After receiving four calls, he went outside and looked through his binoculars in the direction people had reported. He saw it, too—a bright object flashing colored lights, and changing positions at about 6,000 feet up. It also appeared to be changing shapes. Pirouzi knew there were no planes or helicopters in the vicinity that night. At around 12:30 a.m., he alerted the Air Force command post. Deputy General Yousefi, who was in charge at the time, walked outside, and he also saw the object. He decided to scramble an Air Force Phantom F-4II jet from Shahrokhi air base, located outside of Tehran, to investigate. The F-4 carried two people, Captain Aziz Khani and First Lieutenant Hossein Shokri, the navigator. I was a major and the squadron commander at the time, and one of my pilots, who was among the first men alerted in the area, took off immediately. I left my house and headed for the base in order to be responsive to the operation there. The F-4 was up when I arrived at the base, and both Khani and Shokri had seen the object and were attempting to chase it. But it was moving close to the speed of sound, so they couldn't catch it. When they came within a closer distance to it, all of their instrumentation went out, the radio was garbled, and they lost communication. After the F-4 moved away again, it regained all the instruments and could resume away again, it communications. the instruments and could away resume understand. Being in attack mode also diminishes the possibility of DOGFIGHT OVER TEHRAN by General Parviz Jafari (Ret.), Iranian Air Force About ten minutes later, I was ordered to take off in a second jet to