KEY POINTS:
One month after Iran - the world's fourth biggest oil producer - triggered violent protests by introducing petrol rationing overnight, the shock measures are beginning to bite.
But will they also bite the man who introduced them, Iran's radical President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the self-proclaimed champion of the poor?
In Tehran, petrol queues have become a frequent sight. On Friday night, as Tehranis returned to the city after their weekly day off, cars were backed up at midnight outside one petrol station in northern Tehran, home to the city's wealthy, Hermes-wearing elite, which has never been a fan of the populist President.
Here, restaurant diners don't even look up from their lamb kebabs when a creature in a red scarf drives her matching red sports car along Valiasr Avenue, the tree-lined road that cuts through the city from north to south.
It's a different story in the working-class southern districts, where voters turned out in their hordes to elect the Tehran Mayor as President in June 2005.
Impoverished Iranians who supplement their income as unofficial taxi drivers have been particularly affected by the petrol rationing, which was introduced with only three hours' notice on June 27, prompting motorists to burn down a dozen petrol stations around Tehran.
Although rioting was reported elsewhere in the country, the effects of the rationing are considered to be most felt in the capital, a city of 14 million.
Private motorists are allowed only 100 litres a month, or three litres a day, while official taxis get 800 litres a month.
The measures have produced three main effects in Tehran: traffic has been cut by a third, giving the city's notoriously reckless drivers even more scope; a black market thrives as motorists who don't use their full quota sell their surplus; and the usual smog has lifted, revealing the Alborz mountains to the north of the city.
The question now is the extent to which the President's declining popularity will be further damaged by the rationing, which comes at a time when inflation - officially 13 per cent but estimated to be at least double that - is rising.
Ahmadinejad defended his measures on television last week and refused to back a proposal to allow people to pay the market rate for petrol once their ration runs out. As one Western analyst put it: "The rich can't buy their way out of it."
Some praise the President for introducing the measure, which was under discussion for years.
Hossein Shariatmadari, president of the conservative Kayhan group of newspapers, which supports Ahmadinejad, said: "Rationing was a necessary measure which should have been taken a long time ago but, unfortunately, we did not have a government courageous enough."
Though Iran is a major oil exporter, it lacks refining capacity and has to import 60 per cent of its petrol while continuing to subsidise petrol for domestic consumption.
Shariatmadari said he thought the Government would not be harmed politically, as long as public transport is expanded as promised.
But there are fears of more trouble this year, when people who use their rations too fast run out.
A Western analyst said: "It's too early to see the real effects of it yet. It will take three or four months."
After a setback in local elections last December, the next test for Ahmadinejad's conservative faction will come in parliamentary elections next March. Ahmadinejad faces a presidential election in June 2009.
"He has no brain," said one Tehrani as he risked his life by attempting to cross the road. So why did people vote for him? "I didn't vote," came the reply.
- INDEPENDENT
