The government and clerical establishment have gone to great pains in recent weeks to stress to Iranians that the nation's independence is under threat. More than anything else, a strong sense of national pride has pushed Iran toward developing a nuclear power program, which the U.S. and other nations believe is aimed at building a nuclear weapon.
"Our revolution was a gift from God. If we don't say 'Thank God' every day, we will lose this gift and all we have," Ahmad Khatami, a hard-line cleric from Qom, reminded hundreds gathered for Friday prayers at Tehran University last week. "Attacking the government and the parliament and the judiciary is fanning the flames of the enemy."
Ahmadinejad's approach has been broadly popular in the provinces and among many in Tehran fed up with the wealth and corruption of those in power. The slight president, who typically wears a tan jacket, lives in a simple house and drives a normal car.
He has tried to give the lower classes a bigger share of Iran's oil wealth and has been known to respond to constituents who write to him about problems with a handwritten note, directing them to take it to the nearest bank for a loan.
But the state's share of the economy has swollen, and the Tehran stock exchange has lost more than a quarter of its value over the last 18 months. Unemployment stands at an official 11.5%, and little new foreign investment is coming in.
Meanwhile, prices are increasing at a dizzying rate. Tomatoes have risen threefold in the last year, while housing prices in more prosperous north Tehran appear to have doubled.
Bakhtieri said his mother, a university librarian, was one of several public employees who got a raise shortly after Ahmadinejad was elected, only to see it taken back when the government couldn't afford it. Some employees even had to repay the extra money they received, he said.
Bakhtieri said many Iranians blame their troubles on Ahmadinejad's generous aid programs to Afghanistan, Central Asia, the Palestinian territories and Latin America.
"I don't know why, when our people need lots of things, they have to be spending all this money in other countries," he said.
Economists say the inflation can be traced to the amount of money in circulation doubling over the last 18 months.
The government ordered banks to grant millions of dollars in new loans to small and medium-sized businesses. Bad loans put the banks at risk.
