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.

According to Tehran, members of the government’s Basij militia, ordered to prevent any gatherings, have beaten even small groups of passers-by so the mourners arrived in groups of two or three, muttered brief prayers and left, The Associated Press said, quoting unidentified witnesses.

International condemnation of the authorities’ response to the post-election protests could also be muted since a meeting of the G-8 countries in Trieste, Italy, on Friday seemed divided on how strongly Tehran should be criticized.

While many European countries have forcefully condemned Tehran’s crackdown and President Obama has voiced increasingly stern criticism, Russia, has said isolating Iran would be a mistake, according to Italy’s ANSA news agency. The US delegation at the meeting is headed by William Burns, the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs.

On Thursday, Mehdi Karroubi said he did not consider Ahmadinejad’s victory legitimate, but would pursue his complaints through the legal system.

To avoid violent suppression of street protests, people are turning to other ways of expressing dissent. Echoing a symbol of defiance to the shah, the ritual of 10 pm rooftop shouts of “God is great” and new chants of “Death to the dictator” has been growing stronger by the day.

Some people have begun to identify and embarrass plainclothes agents by circulating photographs of those who infiltrated protests and beat demonstrators.

An expatriate Iranian political analyst, who asked not to be identified, said Moussavi’s “only option will be to court behind the scenes and try to muster support in powerful circles, and use them as his proxies to fight for him, and of course they will fight, but not for Moussavi, but because of their disagreement or because they despise Ahmadinejad” and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.