At least 22 people were injured Sunday by an apparent suicide bombing in the heart of Turkey’s premier city, Istanbul, Turkish media reported.

The 10:30 a.m. explosion struck Taksim Square, a vast transportation and commercial hub that is the city’s busiest node. The apparent targets were police officers at a law enforcement substation at the square’s northern end. At least 10 of those injured were police, and two of the wounded face life-threatening injuries.

Istanbul police chief Huseyin Capkin said more bombs were found in the square, according to Turkey’s semi-official Anatolia news agency. Authorities barred all pedestrian and vehicular traffic to the square, popular with tourists, in case of more explosions.

In a statement broadcast on television, Capkın described the attacker as a male suicide bomber with explosives strapped to his torso who died in the blast. Turkish television showed the apparent body of the attacker covered with newspapers.

“We think the attacker attempted to enter a police bus and detonate the bomb inside, but the explosives went off earlier,” Capkin was quoted as saying.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but it bore the trademarks of Al Qaeda and associated Islamic militants. Turkey last week announced the detention of a dozen suspected Al Qaeda members in Istanbul and the eastern city of Van.

Al Qaeda-inspired militants killed dozens in 2003 attacks on the British consulate, two synagogues and a bank.

Turkey has long fought an on-and-off war against ethnic Kurdish miltants in its southeastern provinces but has been negotiating with representatives of the insurgents, the Kurdistan Workers Party. A unilateral ceasefire by the group, known by the abbreviation PKK, expired this weekend.

daragahi@latimes.com
Suicide bomber injures 22 in Turkey plaza

NPR’s decision to fire news analyst Juan Williams for remarks he made about Muslims on airliners was not only roundly criticized by conservatives Thursday, but also was viewed with alarm by some Muslim American activists and scholars.

Williams said Monday on Fox News‘ “The O’Reilly Factor” that he worries when he sees Muslims in traditional garb on airplanes. NPR fired Williams on Wednesday, saying that his comment violated the news organization’s ethics guidelines and undermined his credibility.

Some prominent Muslims expressed concern Thursday that his firing would widen a gulf between Muslims and non-Muslims in the United States.

“The greater American public remains unsure about Islam and very often hostile about Islam,” said Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic Studies at American University, who examines the divide in his new film and book, “Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam.”

Ahmed said he was disappointed by Williams’ comments. But he added that NPR’s abrupt firing “does not bring the temperature down against Muslims…. Now the debate is, are we being oversensitive to Muslims?”

The flap over Williams’ remarks is the latest example of how the topic of Islam has become a political live wire in this midterm election year.

An emotional fight over the construction of an Islamic community center blocks from the site of the destroyed World Trade Center in New York erupted into a national controversy this summer and became fodder for campaign ads that have aired in Iowa and North Carolina.

At the same time, a threat by a Florida pastor to burn copies of the Koran swelled into an international issue, drawing condemnation from leaders, including President Obama.

The latest furor began last week when Fox News host Bill O’Reilly made an appearance on ABC’s “The View” and declared, “Muslims killed us on 9/11.” That prompted co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to walk off the stage.

That was the incident O’Reilly and Williams were discussing Monday night when Williams said, “I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried.” He also noted that it was not fair to cast all Muslims as extremists.

“We as a country are engaged in a very wild and wooly conversation about Islam and Muslim Americans,” said Suhail Khan, a conservative activist who is a Muslim American, noting that minorities such as Catholics, Jews and Japanese Americans have faced similar hostility throughout U.S. history. “Sometimes the conversation is thoughtful and sometimes it’s ugly.”

But Khan said NPR overreacted in letting Williams go. “While Juan’s comments may have been a little rough around the edges, he was voicing an honest opinion and trying to articulate his personal questions and struggles with perceptions in regards to Muslims,” he said.

The decision drew an avalanche of complaints against the media organization. By Thursday evening, more than 5,400 comments had been posted on NPR.org, many of them angrily accusing the organization of political correctness. Conservative leaders such as Newt Gingrich and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee called for cuts to NPR’s funding.

NPR receives no direct federal money for its operations, but between 1% and 3% of its $160 million budget comes from competitive grants awarded by publicly funded entities such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts

Dana Davis Rehm, NPR’s senior vice president for communications, said that Williams had been warned several times in the past for comments that violated ethics guidelines that prohibit NPR journalists from participating in programs “that encourage punditry and speculation rather than fact-based analysis.”

“We felt we really didn’t have an alternative,” she said. “And it was not without regret and it was not a decision that was made lightly by any means.”

In a piece for FoxNews.com, Williams called his firing “an outrageous violation of journalistic standards and ethics by management that has no use for a diversity of opinion, ideas or a diversity of staff.” He said his discussion with O’Reilly included “no support for anti-Muslim sentiments of any kind.”

Fox News moved aggressively to turn the controversy to its advantage, signing Williams to an expanded role at the cable news network.

matea.gold@latimes.com
Prominent Muslims fear NPR analyst’s firing may fan hostility

The Supreme Court intervened again Monday in a lawsuit against a former George W. Bush administration official, agreeing to decide whether former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft is entirely shielded from claims that he misused the law to arrest terrorism suspects under false pretenses.

Obama administration lawyers appealed on Ashcroft’s behalf and asserted that it would “severely damage law enforcement” if the nation’s top law enforcement official could be held liable for abusing his authority.

In the last five years, civil libertarians have tried, without much success, to sue former Bush administration officials for overstepping the law. These suits have run into a series of procedural barriers. For example, those who accused the government of wiretapping their phones without a search warrant had their cases thrown out of court on grounds they could not prove they had been wiretapped. Others who said they were wrongly arrested and tortured had their claims dismissed when the government invoked the “state secrets” privilege.

Last year, the Supreme Court shielded Ashcroft from being sued by Muslim immigrants in the New York area who said they were arrested and abused in jail after the 9/11 attacks, even though they had no involvement in a terrorism plot. In a 5-4 decision, the high court ruled that the suit against Ashcroft must be dismissed because the plaintiffs could not prove he ordered them to be abused.

The new case arose when Lavoni Kidd, a former football star at the University of Idaho, was arrested and shackled at Washington’s Dulles International Airport in March 2003. He was not taken into custody because he was suspected of a crime, but because he was a supposed “material witness” in another case.

Federal law permits the government in special situations to hold someone as a “material witness” in a pending case. Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union accused Ashcroft of a “gross abuse” of this authority. They say he misused the law to arrest innocent people, even when the government lacked the required “probable cause.”

After the 9/11 attacks Ashcroft announced he would use all the legal authority at his disposal to capture terrorists. Hundreds of Muslim men were arrested and held on immigration charges. That option was not available in Kidd’s case because he is a U.S. citizen.

He had converted to Islam in college and changed him name to Abdullah Al-Kidd. He had cooperated with the FBI after the 9/11 attacks and answered questions about another Muslim man in Idaho who was under investigation in connection with his website.

Several months had elapsed since Kidd had heard from the FBI, but when he bought a round-trip ticket to travel to Saudi Arabia, where he had a study scholarship, the FBI moved to have him arrested. An FBI agent wrongly told a magistrate that Kidd had bought a one-way first-class ticket. The magistrate ordered Kidd arrested and held as a witness. A few days later, then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III testified in Congress and mentioned Kidd’s “arrest” as one of the bureau’s recent successes.

Kidd was strip-searched repeatedly and shackled for more than two weeks in a high-security cell where the lights were kept on, according to his complaint. He was then released, but his passport was taken. In 2005, Kidd sued Ashcroft and other officials, contending they had violated his constitutional rights by arresting him without probable cause.

Ashcroft moved to dismiss the suit, arguing that as the nation’s chief prosecutor, he was absolutely immune from such claims. But a federal judge in Idaho and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to dismiss the suit. Judge Milan Smith said it was “repugnant to the Constitution” for the government to say it “has the power to arrest and detain or restrict American citizens for months on end, in sometimes primitive conditions, not because they have committed a crime, but merely because the government wants to investigate them for possible wrongdoing.”

This ruling, if allowed to stand, would have allowed the case against Ashcroft to proceed toward a trial.

But Acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal appealed to the high court and argued that top prosecutors should be shielded from answering such allegations. “Absolute immunity applies regardless of the prosecutor’s intent,” he said.

The justices announced they will hear the case of Ashcroft vs. Al-Kidd early next year and decide whether the doctrine of prosecutorial immunity requires that the suit be dismissed. New Justice Elena Kagan said she would stay out of the case.

david.savage@latimes.com

Supreme Court to hear civil liberties suit against John Ashcroft

U.S. and British officials are investigating whether a British aid worker kidnapped by Taliban militants in Afghanistan may have been inadvertently killed by American troops as they attempted to rescue her last week.

British officials initially announced that Linda Norgrove, 36, had been killed by her Islamist captors Friday during a rescue attempt carried out by U.S. special forces. Norgrove was kidnapped along with three Afghan colleagues two weeks ago in eastern Kunar province while visiting a development project there. Militants had earlier freed Norgrove’s Afghan co-workers.

On Monday, the U.S. military said in a prepared statement that a review of surveillance footage and interviews with members of the rescue team “do not conclusively determine the cause of her death.” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, ordered an investigation into Norgrove’s death, the statement said.

In London, British Prime Minister David Cameron said at a news conference that Petraeus had told him Norgrove may have been killed by a grenade thrown by a member of the U.S. rescue team. Cameron said his foreign secretary, William Hague, had given the go-ahead to launch the rescue effort after deciding that Norgrove was at grave risk. Cameron said Hague’s decision had his support.

“We were clear that Linda’s life was in grave danger and the operation offered the best chance of saving her life,” Cameron told reporters. “I will obviously go over in my mind 100 times whether it was the right decision, but I profoundly believe it was.”

A former United Nations worker, Norgrove was working on a $150-million project for the U.S. aid group Development Alternatives Inc., aimed at strengthening local economies in Afghanistan.

The decision to forge ahead with a rescue mission was made after North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies received a tip about Norgrove’s whereabouts. Six militants holding Norgrove were also killed in the rescue bid.

alex.rodriguez@latimes.com

U.S. troops may have killed kidnapped British aid worker during failed rescue attempt

Pakistan on Sunday reopened a key Afghan border crossing used by trucks and tankers ferrying fuel and supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan, ending an 11-day blockade imposed after a NATO helicopter cross-border incursion that killed two Pakistani troops.

The first of hundreds of trucks and tankers stranded at the Torkham checkpoint at the Khyber Pass since Sept. 30 began moving across the border early afternoon Sunday. The border reopening should ease the massive bottleneck created by the blockade, which was followed by a series of militant attacks on parked NATO oil tankers and trucks across Pakistan.

More than 150 NATO trucks were set ablaze or damaged in those attacks. At least six people were killed in the attacks.

Although U.S. officials hailed the border reopening as a welcome development, relations between Islamabad and Washington remained palpably tense. The killing of the two Pakistani border soldiers by NATO helicopters on Sept. 30 was seen in Pakistan as an intolerable violation of the country’s sovereignty and came at a time when the U.S. had dramatically stepped up its drone-missile campaign against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants hiding out in Pakistan’s largely lawless tribal areas along the Afghan border.

In September, the U.S. carried out 22 drone-missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas, most of them directed at the Afghan Taliban wing known as the Haqqani network in the North Waziristan region. Pakistan has balked at moving against Haqqani network fighters, a reluctance that has exasperated officials in Washington because Haqqani fighters use North Waziristan as a base for launching attacks on U.S., NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials decided on Saturday that they would reopen the Torkham crossing. That decision came four days after the U.S. government and NATO formally apologized for the deaths of the Pakistani soldiers, saying the helicopter crews mistook the men for insurgents they had been pursuing across the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Pakistan plays a vital role in keeping supply lines open for U.S. and Western troops battling Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. About 40% of NATO’s non-lethal supplies bound for Afghanistan move by truck from the Pakistani port city of Karachi to either the northwestern border crossing at Torkham or the southern crossing at Chaman. The Chaman crossing, located in Balochistan province, was not shut down after the Sept. 30 NATO helicopter incursion.

In recent years, U.S and NATO forces have established northern routes through former Soviet republics in Central Asia as alternate supply lines, which has allowed NATO to reduce its reliance on Pakistan as a transit nation. At one point, 80% of NATO’s non-lethal supplies moved through Pakistan.

alex.rodriguez@latimes.com
Pakistan reopens border crossing to NATO trucks

“It’s not much fun to live through,” said political scientist David Damore of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “It’s about 95%, if not 100%, negative.”

In a surprise move on Saturday, Angle softened some of her harsh stances on government benefits such as Social Security and unemployment insurance that have led opponents to characterize her as extreme, according to the Associated Press. Her remarks came during an interview before an audience with a conservative radio host in Las Vegas.

While Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 14.4%, and the highest foreclosure rate, Reid and Angle concentrated on ratcheting up the fear factor with their new spots, a sign that the race remains uncomfortably tight. Three polls released in the last week showed Angle with a slight lead over Reid, but within the margin of error.

“I would say that the ramping up of the rhetoric indicates that the internal polling of the candidates shows they have no clue who is winning this race,” said Eric Herzik, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. As a result, the candidates are scrambling to demonize each other.

“Reid’s goal isn’t to get people to like him,” Herzik said, “it’s to scare people about Sharron Angle. He’s got very high unfavorables and he knows he can’t change that, so what can he do? Make people like Sharron Angle even less, or be afraid of her.”

In a 30-second spot, Angle accused the incumbent of voting to allow taxpayer dollars to pay for Viagra for convicted child molesters and sex offenders. “What else,” it asks, “could you ever need to know about Harry Reid?”

Her charge is rooted in political maneuvering around the healthcare reform bill that became law this year. Reid voted against an amendment that would have barred the use of federal funds to buy Viagra for sex offenders. Democrats opposed the amendment for procedural reasons. Politifact, a website that evaluates claims in political ads, rated Angle’s charge as “barely true.”

Reid blasted Angle for a vote she cast in 1999 while a member of the Nevada Assembly opposing background checks for people who volunteer with youth and church groups. “Sharron Angle voted to protect the privacy of sex offenders,” says the star of the spot, a Las Vegas family therapist who works with abused kids. A rating for Reid’s ad could not be found on Politifact.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that the bill, which passed the Assembly, would create a fund to pay for the screening of volunteers. The newspaper quoted minutes from the discussion in committee, which reflected that Angle was concerned with “the possible invasion of privacy and liability issues included in the bill.”

Angle has been dogged by other issues, as well.

Last month, she seemed to suggest in a town hall meeting that Dearborn, Mich., which has a large Arab population, is operating under Islamic law, which drew a denunciation from the mayor of that city.

An account by the online news site, Mesquite Local News, said that in response to a question about whether “Muslims are taking over the U.S.,” Angle replied: “Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas, are on American soil, and under constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don’t know how that happened in the United States. It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States.”

On Thursday, the Reno News and Review published an interview with Angle’s one-time pastor, an evangelical Christian, in which he slurred Reid’s Mormon faith, calling it a “cult” and “kooky.” The Rev. John Reed of Sonrise Church in Reno said he was alarmed by Reid’s “allegiance to Salt Lake City,” where the Mormon religion is based.

Angle disavowed Reed’s remarks, but it is unclear what effect they will have on the 11% of Nevada’s voters who are Mormon. Some political observers believe the pastor’s remarks could prompt Mormons, who generally vote Republican, to choose “none of the above,” which is an option on the Nevada ballot.

In the last week, Reid has garnered the endorsements of two prominent Nevada Republicans — the state Senate’s Republican leader Bill Raggio and former First Lady Dema Guinn, whose late husband, Kenny Guinn, was governor from 1999 to 2007.

Iran’s atomic energy chief said that a delay in the launch of the nation’s first nuclear power plant was not caused by a powerful computer virus that has crippled data management systems across the world — but his explanation may not have reassured Persian Gulf residents.

Ali Akbar Salehi blamed a leak in the pool now holding the fuel rods for the Bushehr nuclear power plant.

“A small leak was observed in a pool next to the reactor and was curbed,” he said in comments over the weekend that were reported Monday by the official Islamic Republic News Agency. “This leak caused the activities to be delayed for a few days. The leak has been fixed and the core of the reactor is now working properly.”

Many Western countries and Israel challenge Iran’s insistence that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful. Few believe Iran could use the plant to advance its alleged effort to obtain weapons capability, but Tehran hails the plant as proof it can advance its nuclear program despite sanctions and Western opposition.

The West and Israel’s determination to slow Iran’s nuclear ambitions fueled speculation that the so-called Stuxnet virus, which attacks Siemens industrial equipment like that at Bushehr, caused a delay announced last week.

But Salehi said that virus only infected the Bushehr staff’s laptop computers and not the central system at Bushehr. “This incident has nothing to do with this computer virus,” he said.

Over the weekend, Iran’s intelligence minister Heydar Moslehi told the semi-official Mehr news agency that a number of “nuclear spies” had been arrested. He did not provide details.

News of a leak may cause further concerns about the possibility of an accident at the plant, which is adjacent to the shores of the Persian Gulf. The Russian-made fuel rods for the reactor are currently in a pool in preparation for inserting them into the reactor core.

Delayed for years by a series of disagreements between Russia, which is building the plant, and Iran, Bushehr was supposed begin producing electricity by September and be connected to the country’s power grid by the end of the year. Iranian officials now say the 163 fuel rods will be placed into the reactor core by late December and the 1,000-megawatt plant will begin providing about 3% of Iran’s electricity starting in January.

daragahi@latimes.com
Iran says computer virus not to blame for delay in launching nuclear power plant

Iran and Egypt, two countries that long have been openly hostile to each other, made a surprise agreement Sunday to resume direct flights for the first time since radical clerics ousted Iran’s monarchy in 1979.

Civil aviation and tourism authorities meeting in Cairo signed an accord to begin 28 weekly flights between the two countries but did not specify a start date, media in both countries reported.

The pronouncement baffled observers. The two countries back opposing political camps in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, lack full diplomatic ties and continually snipe at each other. But Iran’s pro-government Fars news agency described the deal and a visit by an Iranian trade delegation to Cairo as “a prelude to the resumption of ties between the two countries.”

The aviation accord comes as U.S.-backed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians struggle for traction. Israel has refused to halt the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, and the Palestinians say negotiations cannot go on while construction continues.

The Jewish settlements are enormously unpopular in the Arab world, but there was no suggestion that Egypt was trying to gain leverage over Israelis or their American backers by making a deal at a time the West is trying to isolate Iran over its nuclear program.

“This move has been long in coming,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank. “What’s remarkable isn’t the resumption of direct flights between Tehran and Cairo, the two largest cities in the Middle East, but the fact that it has taken over 30 years for it to happen.”

Iran appears to be seeking business opportunities to make up for economic troubles caused in part by international sanctions. On Sunday, Iranian aviation authorities announced a 30% increase in domestic air fares to make up for airline budget shortfalls. A day earlier Iranian officials announced a flurry of deals with Syria.

The Egyptian aviation accord coincided with the arrival of an Iranian delegation attending a World Health Organization conference in Cairo, and appeared to be part of a $1.37-billion deal recently announced between Egyptian tycoon Rami Lakah and Iran’s privately owned Kish Airlines, which now mostly flies Iranians between the Persian Gulf and Tehran.

Rapprochement between Egypt and Iran could change the diplomatic balance of the Middle East, but many hurdles remain. Tehran calls Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel, a U.S. lackey, while Cairo considers the Islamic Republic an exporter of extremist Islam and terrorism.

Egyptian officials have complained for years that Iran continues to publicly hail the assassin of Anwar Sadat, who signed Cairo’s peace deal with Israel. Egypt hosts the tomb of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi and annually honors the late monarch, which ruffles Iran.

daragahi@latimes.com

Daragahi reported from Beirut and Hassan from Cairo. Hassan is a news assistant in The Times’ Cairo Bureau.

Iran, Egypt to resume direct flights after 31-year freeze

Syria’s president paid a one-day visit to Iran on Saturday to discuss “the exceptional ties” between the two countries, but the meeting came amid a cluster of regional developments that could divide Damascus and the Islamic Republic.

The substance of the talks between Bashar Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was unclear, but on the agenda were the Iranian leader’s upcoming and controversial visit to Lebanon and the intensified power struggles over the formation of a new government in neighboring Iraq.

Assad’s visit to Tehran also comes after a recent improvement in U.S.-Syrian relations that is worrying to the Islamic Republic, which views Damascus as one of its strategic partners in its ideological campaign against the West.

Syria’s official SANA news agency said that Assad would meet with Ahmadinejad to discuss “the exceptional ties” between the two countries; Assad’s official delegation included a number of top Syrian officials, including Foreign Minister Walid Moallem and Vice President Farouq Shara.

Iranian state television aired live footage of the red-carpet arrival festivities, showing Ahmadinejad and Assad standing side by side, while reporting that Ahmadinejad would award his Syrian counterpart a medal of valor for supporting the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and the militant group Hamas in Gaza.

After the flowery formalities, the two leaders immediately retreated into a meeting and got down to business, discussing bilateral and regional issues as well as “Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine,” the Iranian Students News Agency reported.

Assad’s visit comes on the heels of increased political turbulence in Iraq, where former prime minister and fierce Iran critic Iyad Allawi recently said that he had asked the Syrian authorities to get Iran to stay out of his battle for the premiership. The incumbent, Nouri Maliki, appears to be headed toward retaining his post with the backing of cleric Muqtada Sadr, an ally of Iran.

The meeting also comes less than two weeks before Ahmadinejad’s planned visit to Lebanon, where tensions run high between Hezbollah and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Sunni Muslim party over a U.N. tribunal’s investigation of the assassination of his father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in 2005.

Unconfirmed Arab media reports have said that Assad had asked Ahmadinejad to postpone his visit to Lebanon given the delicate political situation, saying “this is not the right time.” Some analysts say the purported comments might be Assad “delineating his territory” in his wish for Lebanon to be more in the Syrian sphere of influence than the Iranian one.

Reports have emerged that the tribunal might indict Hezbollah members in Hariri’s killing, leading some analysts to say the row over the tribunal could ignite sectarian strife in Lebanon and push the country to collapse.

Aside from regional and international issues, the talks reportedly included discussions over the effects of the new set of sanctions imposed on Iran by Western states and how Syria could help to alleviate their sting on the Islamic Republic.

Assad’s visit might also illustrate an attempt to show Syria’s commitment to its close ties with Iran after a recent meeting between top U.S. and Syrian officials, in which the Washington officials tried to persuade Syria to return to peace negotiations with Iran’s arch-foe Israel.

Last week, Moallem had a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York, in which she reportedly tried to make the case for the negotiations. According to the State Department, the meeting marked the first between a secretary of State and Syria’s top diplomat in three years.

Special correspondent Sandels reported from Beirut and special correspondent Mostaghim from Tehran.

Syrian leader visits Iran to discuss regional issues

“The main systems of the Bushehr nuclear power plant have not been damaged,” Mahmoud Jahfari, the plants project manager, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency today. “Investigations show that some private software of the power plants employees have been contaminated.”

The cyber assault has had no impact on the operations of the plant, Jahfari said.

The IP addresses of 30,000 computer systems infected by the Stuxnet worm have been detected, state-run Mehr news agency reported earlier, citing Mahmoud Liaii, director of the Information Technology Council of the Ministry of Industries and Mines.

A worm is a self-replicating piece of malicious software, or malware.
Iran says nuclear plant unaffected by virus as industrial computers struck