Iran plunged this week into a bitter storm of political recrimination, largely directed at President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as officials and ordinary Iranians realized with shock that the Islamic republic faces a severe economic crisis of its own.

The reason: As oil prices plunge because of the global slowdown, Iran is caught in a classic crunch. Ahmadinejad's government failed to save enough of the billions in oil windfall it earned during the good years to now cushion the bad.

The same crunch afflicts Venezuela and to a lesser extent, Russia, as all three struggle with falling oil prices.

But in Iran, the economic crisis has quickly turned political. Economic woes are the key issue as Ahmadinejad — already deeply unpopular and suffering from exhaustion, he said this week — seeks re-election next summer in a tough vote. And they are shaping up as his weakness.

Critics say he has recklessly squandered Iran's oil windfall on costly, subsidized imports, from fruit and other goods to the gasoline the country must buy overseas because of a refinery shortage, while failing to take any needed reforms.

"The Iranian people got a golden opportunity in history. But it was buried under this government's wrong policies," said Mohsen Safaei Farahani, a former lawmaker and reformist economist.

Among the dire statistics made public this week: The government may have as little as $9 billion left in its hard-currency reserve, the rainy-day fund set aside to bolster the currency, import goods or pay off debt, according to one official, an ally of the president, who gave that figure to newspapers.

Other officials immediately disputed that, saying Iran still had closer to $20 billion or $25 billion in the fund.

But the relatively low figures shocked the country, leading one state agency to send an investigative report to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and parliament Monday, accusing Ahmadinejad's government of financial violations. Among the accusations: His government unlawfully withdrew money from the fund.