Fars news agency illustrated its story with a photo of a flying saucer .

An official press release by Iranian state-controlled news site Fars News, claims that remarkably enough the Islamic Republic has managed to be the first nation ever to build a flying saucer. And no, I didn’t google the image from above, it’s been used instead officially by the news agency to illustrate the press release, although the crooked looking 1950s B-movie screenshot isn’t sourced.

Dubbed Zohal, which means Saturn in Persian, the flying saucer was built for surveillance and defence purposes. Unveiled in a special state ceremony, “the flying machine is equipped with an auto-pilot system, GPS (Global Positioning System) and two separate imaging systems with full HD 10 mega-pixel picture quality and is able to take and send images simultaneously,” according to Farce Fars News.

Photo used by the Iranian Students’ News Agency to illustrate Zohal.

Iranian Students’ News Agency, which has also published a press release about Zohal, has a more “rational” photo attached to its news piece, but they also insist on naming the cuadrotour surveillance flying object as “flying saucer”.

Tehran is dabbling a lot in scientific projects lately, some quite impressive and ambitious, aside from this obvious flying saucer masquerade. For instance, their space program has sent a number of flying missiles in space, which have caused a lot of alarm in the western world for fear of them being used as intercontinental ballistic missiles some day.

Last year, Iran successfully fired a rocket that carried a mouse, a turtle and worms into space, and who doesn’t remember the Iranian humanoid dancing robot Surena 2.

Back to the subject at hand… flying saucers?!?!?!?