A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad must long for the glory days, discussed at the beginning of this article:

The petitions kiosk outside President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's home in Teheran, set up as a hotline to Iran's self-described "humblest servant", receives all kinds of requests.

Yet amid the pleas for help with debts and joblessness, and tussles with Iran's byzantine bureaucracy, there is one letter that the men at the counter particularly remember.

"A woman asked if Mr Ahmadinejad could find her a good husband," said one proudly. "It shows how popular he is - you would only request something like that if you really felt he'd become part of your family."

In this particular case, the president's office replied that it was beyond his powers - a rare admission of defeat from a leader whose personality cult rivals that of Iran's "supreme leader", Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Nowadays, the petitions offered to Iran's president are . . . er . . . less than laudatory:

Yet last week, two years after his election to power on a promise to help Iran's downtrodden masses, Mr Ahmadinejad, 49, finally learnt the downside of the demagogic approach - namely, that running a country of 69 million inhabitants as a one-man band involves taking blame as well as credit.

The issue was not over his notorious threats to "wipe Israel off the map", his defiance on Iran's nuclear programme, nor his puritanical desire to return to the early days of the Islamic revolution. Instead, the man who considers himself on a divine mission was floundering because of his inability to minister to one of his flock's most basic needs: petrol.

On Tuesday, a proclamation from his palace suddenly imposed a fuel ration of three litres (0.6 gallons) a day, a move designed to stockpile supplies because of fears of United Nations sanctions.

Within hours his name was being cursed, as motorists clashed with riot police at fuel stations and set garage forecourts ablaze.

"Without fuel I cannot earn," said the driver of a battered saloon car who had finally reached the head of a long queue for petrol. He was a shopkeeper who, like many residents of Teheran, supplements a meagre income by moonlighting as a cabbie. "Ahmadinejad is an ass. This is not what he promised the ordinary man."

The protests, the most open sign of discontent with Mr Ahmadinejad's rule since he took office in 2005, were accompanied by a stream of text-messaged jokes, which often serve as a vent for Iranians' suppressed frustrations. "On the orders of President Ahmadinejad," read one, "those who are short of petrol can have a ride on the 17 million donkeys who voted for him."

For a man whose key election promise was to "put the oil income on people's tables", there could scarcely be a more symbolic failure than the imposition of fuel rationing. Heavily state-subsidised, petrol normally costs less than bottled drinking water at about 1,000 rials (5p) a litre, and most Iranians regard it with a sense of entitlement.

The government, admittedly, has long threatened to introduce such measures, pointing out that such generous subsidies encourage wasteful usage and exacerbate the choking fumes on Teheran's streets. Now, however, the fuel restrictions are seen as the latest example of how hardship has grown under Mr Ahmadinejad.

The fear of UN sanctions following Iran's refusal to stop uranium enrichment means that foreign investment in the country has waned, hampering the president's ability to deliver on his pledge to slash unemployment. His response, a big, state-directed jobs and welfare programme using earnings from record oil revenues, has led to inflation soaring to 40 per cent.

Only weeks ago, 50 senior Iranian economists wrote an open letter warning that the president's policies were hurting the people he had vowed to help - the poor. It was the second such missive in a year, yet it is no surprise that it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

This start reversal of fortunes couldn't happen to a more deserving guy, of course. Pity that the Iranian people must suffer alongside Ahmadinejad's political fortunes. Once upon a time, Ahmadinejad's political camp appeared to be laden with gold and treasures. Nowadays, it looks and feels like a leper colony.