The Sunday Telegraph attempted to track down the traders with the presidential ear, but those near Mr Ahmadinejad's home denied that he had ever sought their counsel. Even if he had done, it is unlikely he would have liked what he heard.

"I voted for Ahmadinejad because I thought he represented a new way of doing things," said Samid Jalali, a grocer, whose cramped shop is a minute's stroll from Mr Ahmadinejad's house.

"But I am not satisfied with the way things are going. Inflation is much worse now: a tin of cooking oil has gone from $6 to $9 in just three months, for example. We have arguments every day with customers now, because they think we are just increasing the prices for ourselves."

Small wonder, then, that Mr Ahmadinejad's critics predict that his downfall may lie in the discontent of his ordinary working-class constituents, rather than the reformist efforts of Teheran's educated, pro-Western middle class. The reformists remain as fractured as they were during the last elections, and an increasing clampdown on the press, academia and student organisations seems to have further weakened them, rather than galvanised them.

Instead it is the economy that is Mr Ahmadinejad's Achilles' heel, said one Western official, not least because his highly personalised style of government means there is nobody else to take the blame.

Even his harshest critics, though, concede that Mr Ahmadinejad has tried to connect with the Iranian people in a way that few of his predecessors, reformist or hardline, have ever done. Since he came to power he has made a point of touring the country's provinces and visiting remote villages that have suffered decades of neglect.

Of more concern, critics say, is the "narcissistic" way such visits are carried out. They usually start with a speech about the Mehdi, the Shia messiah whom Mr Ahmadinejad believes will soon arrive to deliver universal justice. Yet listening to the grandiose promises that inevitably follow, some might wonder what would be left for the Mehdi to do.

"He loves to show off by asking the ordinary people what they want, and telling them he will build roads and houses," said one senior reformist.

"But it's all about him, and it often involves humiliating the provincial governors. On some occasions he has told a crowd of people, 'I will twist this governor's ear for you,' while the governor is sitting there. How is the governor supposed to maintain his authority after that?"

Opponents are pinning their hopes on Mr Ahmadinejad being unable to satisfy his growing legion of supplicants, most of whom, they claim, get nothing more than one of five standard response letters when they send in a petition. "Soon there will be disappointment, because little of what people ask of him will materialise," predicted Abdullah Momeni, another leading reformist.

That, however, may not stop Mr Ahmadinejad spending billions of pounds in the attempt. He now has an extremely ambitious plan to create up to a million jobs in Iran's under-developed rural east, by building a vast network of steel, cement, and petrochemicals factories - despite the fact that some of the planned steelworks will be more than 200 miles from the nearest iron mines.

The scheme has been condemned as "Stalinist" by Mr Ahmadinejad's critics, who say it will squander state oil riches on plants that will eventually be left to rust away.

Yet for the president's diehard faithful, only when Islamo-communism's first five-year plan is complete will his own judgment day truly come. Even then, in keeping with all hardline ideologues, they are likely to insist that failure is not the fault of the revolution itself, but of its enemies.

"Ahmadinejad is number one," said Mohammed Reza, a member of the Basiji religious militia, which provides the bedrock of his support. "But we can only evaluate him once his work is done - and right now there are many people standing in his way."