Iran's leaders quell threats to authority

Two weeks after Iran’s disputed presidential election, Mir Hussein Moussavi, the top challenger, issued an angry statement yesterday that underscored his commitment to press ahead - but also his impotence in the face of an increasingly emboldened and repressive government.

Moussavi does not have a political organization to rally, and during the height of the unrest he attracted a large following more because of whom he opposed - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - than because of what he stood for, analysts said.

“I am willing to show how election criminals have stood by those behind the recent riots and shed people’s blood,’’ Moussavi said in a statement on his website. “I will not back down even for a second because of personal threats and interests from defending the rights of the people.’’

Perhaps the most important question now is whether the leadership can paper over the deep divisions that the election has widened within Iran’s political elite, which present the most serious threat to the system in its 30-year history.

There were still signs of widespread public anger and resentment toward the leadership, but no organization to channel it, political analysts said.

The hard-line leadership appears to have intimidated some opposition figures into stepping back from the defiance and confrontation that have upended Iran over the past two weeks.

Yesterday, Mehdi Karroubi, another defeated presidential candidate, who had been more visible in recent days than Moussavi, said he did not consider Ahmadinejad’s victory legitimate, but would pursue his complaints through the legal system. On Wednesday, a third candidate, Mohsen Rezai, dropped his complaints altogether.

But there were also signs of continued resistance.

A few conservatives have expressed revulsion at the sight of unarmed protesters being beaten, even shot, by government forces. Only 105 out of the 290 members of Parliament took part in a victory celebration for Ahmadinejad on Tuesday, newspapers reported. The absence of so many lawmakers, including the speaker, Ali Larijani, a powerful conservative, was striking.

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 p.m. rooftop shouts of “God is great’’ and new chants of “Death to the dictator’’ have 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. And protesters have pledged to release thousands of green and black balloons today in memory of those killed in the clashes.

The government appeared to fall back on a familiar playbook: trying to rouse Iranians through populist appeals against outside interference and dark accusations of foreign conspiracy. Ahmadinejad stepped out of the shadows to lash out at President Obama, who said Tuesday that he was “appalled and outraged’’ by the crackdown on protesters.

Yesterday, Ahmadinejad said: “We expected the British and European countries to make those kinds of comments. But we were not expecting Mr. Obama, who has talked about change, to fall in the same trap and follow the same path that Bush did.’’