Iran’s foreign exchange revenues also sank in recent years as oil prices fell from prerecession highs, creating greater budget pressures. But Tehran has long sought to cut the subsidies  even under the reformist administration of President Mohammad Khatami  and particularly for oil.

The logic is compelling: artificially low prices encourage greater consumption, leaving less oil to export for cash. And the higher oil prices rise, the greater the “opportunity costs” in lost exports. But the timing, whether for political or economic reasons, was never right to cut the subsidies.

While the government may be feeling economic pressure now, analysts say, the current program of cuts is principally a sign of its political strength, having vanquished the opposition that sprang up after the 2009 elections and stared down the government’s traditional conservative wing, which has challenged Mr. Ahmadinejad’s authority.

“This was something the two previous administrations wanted to do but could not accomplish,” said Kevan Harris, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University who has written extensively on Iran’s economy and social welfare system. “Now that the liberals have been sidelined, like any good politician, Ahmadinejad has taken the most popular ideas from the opposing side and implemented them himself.”

The success of the subsidy cuts so far also seems to have contributed to a continuing reassessment of Mr. Ahmadinejad. He emerged in the diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks as something of a sober pragmatist  battling with retrograde forces in the government  rather than as the ranting extremist he seemed when he called for Israel to be wiped off the map. In October 2009, according to one of the cables, he argued for a nuclear compromise promoted by the United States that would have sent uranium out of the country for enrichment. And during the protests following the 2009 elections, he is reported to have argued for more freedom of the press  until a general in the Revolutionary Guards slapped him and shouted, “It is you who created this mess!”