Late last month, Iran put on display what it insisted was a captured American stealth drone. At the time, Tehran claimed it brought down the RQ-170 with a sophisticated electronic attack. Nonsense, says one Iranian engineer who claims to have inside knowledge of the drone-nab. The Islamic Republic used force fields and flying saucers to subdue and capture the unmanned aircraft.

Meet Mehran Tavakoli Keshe, who purports to be the father of the RQ-170 abduction. In a recent post to his eponymous foundation's online forums, Keshe claims the Iranians used "advanced space technology" that he pioneered. "The craft has been air-picked-up and been put down on its belly through the use of field forces," Keshe writes – by which he means force fields. It's feeling a lot like Tinfoil Tuesday, our weekly round-up of the planet's most insane conspiracy theories.

'The Defense Secretary would like his lightsaber back.'The U.S. has yet to confirm that the drone Iran claims to have is actually the stealthy "Beast of Kandahar," and the yellow model that Iran has peddled out looks like it's made out of fondant, like a drone-shaped cake constructed for an episode of Food Network Challenge. Keshe claims that the drone looks as smooth and clean as it does in Iran's propaganda photos because his force fields intercepted the RQ-170, like a tractor beam would, and deposited it gently to Iranian soil. As summarized by Pure Energy Systems News, Keshe's technology, part of an "Iranian [flying] saucer program," harnesses "a fusion reaction that manipulates dark matter, regular matter, and antimatter."

"We have no comment on this individual's claims," George Little, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, tells Danger Room, "but tell him the Secretary would like his lightsaber back."

VCs Steve Schlafman, Ash Patel, Trae Vassallo spoke about the future of hardware startups at Hardware 2.0. Klein Perkins Managing Director Eric Klein (far left) moderated the panel Photo: Sarah Mitroff/Wired

Keshe himself suggests that Iran's advanced space program has yielded flying saucers and used them to down the drone. "The Iran spaceship program has the capability of jamming and blocking any incoming radar," he writes, "as we have explained month ago on this forum, and now we see the practical use of the technology."

Ironies abound. Iran allegedly has alien technology, but can't seem to put together a decent nuclear bomb. And the Beast of Kandahar – well, it's got an alien connection, too. In a sense. As you can learn from this fascinating documentary, flying-wing technology of the sort displayed by the RQ-170 was first developed by the, um, Nazis. (You can see a mock-up of a Nazi proto-stealth fighter here.) After the war, the U.S. imported Nazi weapons scientists – like the missile specialist Werner von Braun – under a program called Operation Paperclip. Among them were flying-wing gurus the Horton Brothers. One theory holds that the subsequent American UFO sightings were actually people seeing U.S. flights of the Hortons' unfamiliar bat-shaped aircraft.

In other words, the RQ-170 may have been born from flying saucers – sort of – and flying saucers may have brought it low.

Not to be That Guy and burst Keshe's bubble, but Danger Room explained last month that Iran could have captured the drone by spoofing the RQ-170's GPS-based navigational backup systems. No force fields or saucers necessary.

Keshe isn't interested in any of that. Even though his saucers and tractor beams allegedly captured the RQ-170, majorly cheesing off Washington, Keshe hopes his space tech will bring about a new era of international peace – and intergalactic exploration.

"We invite the US government and other nations to enter into negotiation with the Foundation and The Iranian government," he posted, "for disclosure of the full space technology to all nations simultaneously that there shall be no more war race, but a pace race [sic] to join and conquer the space and not each others little peace of lands so called nations, this offer stands and is extended to all nations irrespective of their colour, race and religion."