Tehran, Iran ? Prices for vegetables have tripled in the past month, housing prices have doubled since last summer – and as costs have gone up, so has Iranians’ discontent with hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his focus on confrontation with the West.

Ahmadinejad was elected last year on a populist agenda promising to bring oil revenues to every family, eradicate poverty and tackle unemployment. Now he is facing increasingly fierce criticism for his failure to meet those promises.

He is being challenged not only by reformers but by the conservatives who paved the way for his stunning victory in 2005 presidential elections. Even conservatives say Ahmadinejad has concentrated too much on fiery, anti-U.S. speeches and not enough on the economy.

“The government has painted idealistic goals like tackling housing problems and unemployment … but no solution has been offered,” Mohammad Khoshchehreh, a prominent conservative lawmaker, told The Associated Press.

Ahmadinejad’s government “has been strong on populist slogans but weak on achievement,” said Khoshchehreh, who campaigned for Ahmadinejad during the election.

Skyrocketing prices

The president has touted himself as a tough anti-Western leader, frequently denouncing the United States. His comments that Israel should be “wiped off the map” and his questioning of the Nazi Holocaust have sparked anger in the West and increased Iran’s isolation.

At the same time, he has aggressively pushed ahead Iran’s nuclear program, shrugging off U.N. demands that the country halt uranium enrichment. As a result, the U.N. in December imposed sanctions on Iran.

The sanctions were limited to a ban on selling materials and technology that could be used in Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and the freezing of assets of 10 Iranian companies and individuals.

But since then the prices of fruit, vegetables and other widely used commodities in Iran – already rising – have skyrocketed, apparently because of fears of harsher punishment.

An Iranian woman carries a few items in a supermarket in northern Tehran, Iran. As food prices and housing costs have risen rapidly, so has discontent with hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Tehran housewife Maryam Hatamkhani, 28, said her family has given up buying potatoes and tomatoes because prices have tripled or quadrupled in the past month. Tomatoes have gone from about 33 cents a pound to $1.50.

“People are really under pressure. We are unhappy. Instead of bringing welfare, this government has given us hardship,” she said.

Solutions demanded

Lawmakers summoned Ahmadinejad’s Housing Minister Mohammad Saeedikia to parliament for questioning over the rising prices – they have doubled in six months – which he blamed on increasing demand.

He promised a plan to control prices, but gave no specifics.

Demand for housing has swelled because of a population bulge in Iran. After the 1979 Islamic revolution, hard-line clerics encouraged Iranians to have more children, causing a high birth rate in the 1980s and prompting them to reverse the policy in the 1990s.

In a sign of the growing discontent, the president’s allies suffered a humiliating defeat in December local elections, carried by reformists and anti-Ahmadinejad conservatives.

Since then, Ahmadinejad’s critics have become bolder, denouncing his nuclear policies, long seen as above criticism and an issue of national pride. They accuse him of unnecessarily escalating the nuclear standoff with his harsh rhetoric.

Reformist and conservative lawmakers are considering calling Ahmadinejad before parliament to answer questions about his nuclear diplomacy and economic policies.

So far no date has been set for summoning him.