THE assassination of a prominent cleric in an oil-rich Iranian province, coinciding with violent protests in Tehran over the rationing of petrol, has plunged President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into his biggest crisis since he was elected two years ago.

Last Sunday’s murder of Hesham Saymary in Ahvaz, the centre of Iran’s oil-producing province in the south, was a blow to a regime that is already under pressure because of international condemnation of its nuclear programme and the prospect of economic meltdown.

The assassination, the third of a senior cleric this year, bore the hallmarks of a well-planned murder. According to witnesses, the gunmen waited outside Saymary’s house for him to arrive home at about 10pm. They called out to the plump cleric as he was about to open his front door and shot him three times. He died instantly.

There have been other assassinations in Iran, notably in the Kurdish area in the west near the Iraq border, but the government is far more concerned about Saymary’s death because stability in the province is crucial for its oil revenues.

Saymary was a member of the majority Arab population of Ahvaz, the focus of an Arabist separatist movement that follows the Wahhabi sect of Islam, linked to Osama Bin Laden. He may have been targeted because he was a prominent supporter of the regime.

Protests that followed shortly afterwards over the rationing of petrol convulsed Iran and its increasingly discontented citizens.

The rationing is particularly damaging to Ahmadinejad because those worst affected are the constituency that elected him, the poor and disenfranchised. During his campaign he adopted the slogan: “Oil money must be seen on the table of the people.”

He increased Iran’s public spending budget, and promised dams, streets, stadiums, schools and hospitals. Few have been built. His biggest headache is that Iran, awash with crude oil but desperately short of refining capacity, has to import 40% of its petrol.

Faced with United Nations sanctions and pariah status over its nuclear ambitions, the regime lacks the foreign investment it needs to build more refineries.

On the streets of Tehran last week housewives who are usually apolitical, were willing to throw his slogans back in his face. “We have some of the biggest oil reserves in the world,” said Fatima, 38, a mother of five dressed in the all-encompassing black chador. “Why do I have to worry if I can pick up my children? The president said he would put the oil money on the tables of the poor. It’s all lies.”

There was chaos last Tuesday when the government gave just three hours’ notice of fuel rationing. Drivers lined up at their local pumps and fought over the last drops of petrol in the face of a limit of 22 gallons a month.

Worse still, the private taxis that carry more than half of Tehran’s 2m commuters a day were subject to the same restrictions and would have had to raise their fares accordingly, from about 5p to 25p.

Young men set petrol stations alight in Tehran and the security forces were called in for the first time since Ahmadinejad was elected.

By the end of the week the protests had been stifled, but it was a clear indication of how fractious the population was feeling.

Ahmadinejad was personally opposed to the petrol rationing, but was overruled by the Majlis, the Iranian parliament. His objections centred on the timing of its introduction. He wanted stability while the regime faced American plans to engineer regime change, either through military strikes or by a revolution from within.

Little noticed in the international media, but keenly watched in Tehran, is the Bush administration’s donation of £33m to Iranian opposition groups.

The worry now is that the regime will crack down on domestic freedoms to distract attention from its problems. “They always do this,” said a university lecturer.

Others predict that Ahmadinejad will stand firm. “They bit the bullet,” said an Iranian economist. “These guys have the ability to put people on corners with guns. They’re not turning back.”

Baghdad anger as US kills 26

American raids in Sadr City, Baghdad’s largest Shi’ite slum, killed 26 alleged Iraqi terrorists yesterday and drew angry accusations that US forces were firing blindly on civilians.

The US military said it had conducted two predawn raids against terrorists who attacked them with small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs. But Iraqi police and hospital officials said the dead were civilians killed in their own homes.

Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, issued a statement saying: “The Iraqi government totally rejects US military operations . . . conducted without a preapproval from the Iraqi military command.”

Seventeen suspected militants were detained in the operation.

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