TEHRAN, Iran -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad admitted today that the country’s centrifuges, used in the highly controversial enrichment of uranium, had been infected with a malicious computer virus, supporting reports issued the week before by Western diplomats.

Ahmadinejad continues to insist that the nuclear program is aimed strictly at power generation, but major Western powers that include Russia, Iran’s longtime ally, have become increasingly concerned that the enrichment program will soon enable Iran to build and launch nuclear weapons. The likely target, as intimated in Ahmadinejad’s vitriolic speeches, would be Israel.

Ahmadinejad did not specify which virus had plagued the systems controlling the centrifuges, but other officials in the Iranian government described some of the adverse effects. Said one scientist on condition of anonymity, “The virus created problems for only a limited number of our centrifuges, but the software has not been restored yet. Whenever we attempt to access the compromised platforms, a strange man in a banana suit appears singing a song about peanut butter, jelly and baseball bats. Our top code breakers are working around the clock to decipher the message, which can only be attributed to a decadent Western regime.”