As Iran's leaders push back threats to their authority after the disputed presidential election, crushing street protests and pressing challengers to withdraw or to limit their objections, the country’s main electoral oversight group ruled on Friday that the ballot had been the “healthiest” since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The statement by the 12-member Guardian Council fell short of formal certification of the ballot. But it offered further evidence that, despite mass demonstrations and violent confrontation with those who call the election a fraud, the authorities are intent on enforcing their writ and denying their adversaries a voice.

Two weeks after the election on June 12, Mir Hussein Moussavi, issued an angry statement on Thursday that underscored his commitment to press ahead — but also his impotence in the face of an increasingly emboldened and repressive Government that restricted his ability to do much more than express outrage.

In remarks quoted on the official IRNA news agency, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, a spokesman for the Guardian Council, said the panel had “almost finished reviewing defeated candidates election complaints”, which the council said earlier numbered in excess of 600.

“The reviews showed that the election was the healthiest since the revolution,” Kadkhodaei said. “There were no major violations in the election.”

With most protests suppressed or canceled, a few dozen people arrived Friday at the Behest-e Zahra cemetery to mourn Neda Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old woman shot dead last Saturday whose image went round the world as an instant emblem of the protest.

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