A Tehran news weekly that featured a smiling photograph of the American President-elect on its front cover last week and asked "Why doesn't Iran have an Obama?" has been closed down.

It appeared to be a taunt too far for Iran’s notoriously thin-skinned president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and saw the magazine Shahrvand-e Emrouz (Today’s Citizen) promptly banned by Iran’s Press Supervisory Board.

The closure of the propular reformist weekly suggests that Mr Ahmadinejad is determined to silence his critics as he prepares for elections next June that could hand him a second-four year term. Where victory had once seemed assured, now he must expect a bruising contest with an uncertain outcome.

Numerous problems, all widely covered by the Iranian media, have bedevilled Mr Ahmadinejad in recent weeks. His expansionary budget is blamed for rampant inflation, oil prices have plummeted, aides have admitted that he suffers from strain and exhaustion, and an embarrassing forgery scandal claimed the scalp of his interior minister last week.

Ironically, Mr Ahmadinejad’s chances of re-election could now lie in the hands of Barack Obama, the charismatic American beaming from Shahrvand’s last-ever front page on Saturday.

As the populist Mr Ahmadinejad realises, normalising ties with the “global arrogance” would be very popular with Iran’s electorate, even though any rapprochement would be bitterly resisted by a minority of Tehran’s radical hardliners.

Most Iranians were delighted by Mr Obama’s victory and Mr Ahmadinejad lost little time in sending an unprecedented message of congratulations to the incoming leader of a superpower that severed ties with Iran 28 years ago.

Mr Obama and his future vice-president, Senator Joseph Biden, have in the past urged unconditional dialogue with Iran. But Tehran can expect no dramatic initiative from Mr Obama when he takes up residence in the White House in January. Most analysts believe he will instead wait for the outcome of the June elections.

The tacit message to Iranian voters will be that there is a better chance of rapprochement if they elect a moderate, such as the charismatic former president Mohammad Khatami, who has yet to declare his candidacy.

“Given his (Ahmadinejad’s) considerable mismanagement of the economy, it will be difficult for him to run on the platform of economic justice and populism that got him elected in 2005,” Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert with the Carnegie Endowment for Peace in Washington, wrote in a recent paper offering advice to the next US president.

“A major overture from the United States before the elections could redeem his (Ahmadinejad’s) management style and increase his popularity,” Mr Sadjadpour continued. “For this reason, it is better for Washington to begin with cautious limited engagement with Tehran until June 2009, when Iran’s domestic situation will become clearer.”

Iran’s government clearly was rankled by Mr Obama’s keenly-anticipated first remarks on Tehran after his election triumph. Serving notice that he would be no pushover on the Islamic Republic, he declared: “Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon I believe is unacceptable. We have to mount an international effort to prevent that happening.”

Times Recommends

• Please help: maimed children of war want their lives back
• Cabal seizes diamond riches to buy power
• White House gatecrashers got to the president