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iran is gearing up for two key elections that will be held simultaneously on friday march the 1st. people will go to a poles to elect in members of parliament and the assembly of experts and exercise in democracy in the west asia region.

joins us from tehran, also joining us is shabir risby, political commentator who joins us from chicago. welcome to you both fudi, let me first start with you, and i'm going to uh get right to the one of the most important aspects of this, and that's democratic vote. a i mean, if you want to take a look at the stats themselves, 40 elections held in iran since the victory of the islamic revolution. the friday vote is going to be the 12th one, parliamentary election, and the sixth uh...

one for the assembly of experts and in terms of just the whole motion of this uh vote taking place for members of parliaments, the assembly of experts uh where the members of parliament elected in multi and single seat constituencies. the list is rather long as to how this is the democratic exercise uh, what do you say to the people who don't really look at it that way? i think people look at iran elections and realize there is democratic. process, i think the people who question the elections are generally associated with oppressive governments, united states for example, and political science we have this democratic peace theory, which says that democracies don't enter into serious conflicts with each other, and since americans say that they have a... democracy,

by definition, iran should not have democracy, iran should not be democracy, and that's why they question elections in iran, but when you compare what we have in iran, and the democracy that exists in the united states, a number of factors, iranian democracy is actually healthier, more... vibrant and more serious than the two party dictatorship that you see in the united states and we don't get candidates like trump running the country, so overall i think there is level of jealousy and there is level of animosity and that's expected from the countries that have been supporting dictator.

ships including the shah dictatorship, and they obviously don't like iranians running their own country and opposing western in this part of the world. well, our guess, i didn't waste any time going after the us, you're in the us, let's look at the us in terms of the system being democratic or not. uh, it's been called undemocratic, our guest alluded to that, and we're looking a system that is set up to that effect, even though people think of the us as being a democratic country when it comes to its voting, tell us if you uh agree with that or not, and what what your views are on that? uh, thank you for having me, um, if you gave me an entire day, i wouldn't be able to stop talking about this. because we don't have democracy, our choices, at least when it comes to the presidential uh campaign that's happening this november are between two signs to imperialists that are both in bed with wall street, the are both in bed with the military industrial complex, and they're not really interested in what people have to say, they're interested in what their shareholders

have to say, it's for the everyday american, they are basically choosing who gets to oppress them and who gets to oppress the rest the world, there is virtually... difference for example between biden and trump, there's virtually none, and then it gets even worse when you actually look at what are our congressional elections, right? so actually let's talk about voter turnout first, between 2016 and 2022, only about 30% of the population voted in every single election between those key years and those would have to be of course the trump years that were full of chaos and just crisis. after crisis and a little bit into the biden years, a time where there's this much crisis, you would think voter voter turnout would be soaring into nearly 100%, but they stayed stagnant and so it was about 50%. in the same poll, this is poll by p research center. young americans believe that there's virtually,

overwhelmingly believe, by the way, about 65%, believe that there's virtually no difference between the parties, and this is actually the the correct conclusion, there is no difference, because at the end of the day... "the american condition continues to deteriorate day after day, while the banks make billions, while the the the software giants make billions, literally everybody that's already been making billions gets to make more billions off the backs of the working class, all the while our taxpayer money goes towards funding the war machine and funding our own suppression, so i would have to agree with my guess here, it's a it's a it's it's it's not even two parties, this is facade, there's minimally no difference." "if you had told me to guess which party someone was based off what their foreign policy is, i would have no idea because they're both virtually the same. sure, well uh to the facts that you mentioned there, the young people and also in terms of the voter turnout, i like to ask you about uh the voter turnout uh issue fudhazadi, i'm looking here

at uh iran's uh voter turnout and to 2009, it was the record 84.8%, the lowest was back in 1990, 37.1%. sent for the assembly of experts, but if you throw those two out, the average median turns out to be about 51.8%, if not higher. uh, i'm looking at conservative estimate here, which is much fur-uh, much higher than what our guests are mentioned for the us, and much higher than many western other western democracies or or quote unquote democracies. uh, so that debunks that myth that the voter turnout is uh is low in iran, if again if people think of it that way, um, am i right to look at it this way uh? i think you are right, and please remember that congressional elections in the united states are held on the same day as presidential elections, so in 2024 you have the presidential election, and then you have house of representatives, the whole 435

seats are up for grabs, and then you have one third of the us senate, and you know when when you have... congressional election and and presidential elections on the same day you expect to get a higher voter turn out and the average, as our guest in chicago said, the average for congressional elections in the united states is about 35%, which is lower than the worst voter turn out in iran, and the us government officials have this... dacity of questioning democracy in iran and when when they engage in this type of rhetoric, the very simple question is that what's the state of democracy in the united states and when you look at you, nowadays we

have the primaries in the united states, they started with iowa and then they moved to... i'm sure yesterday was michigan, i haven't had the chance to look at michigan turnout, but in iowa the turnout was less than 15%, it was 14 point something. similar thing was was in new hampshire, and you the amount of money that was spent in iowa was over 100 over 100 million dollars, 100 million dollars, and the number of people who showed up were about 100 thousand people, so you do the calculation, every vote cost was more than a thous, and with all the television ads, all the competition that that looks competition, but

but as the guest said in chicago, you on foreign policy issues, you hardly can see any difference in terms of the violence that united states brings to the world, so looking at these data, i think anyone can basically judge that, "the elections in iran are actually more in line with basic democratic principles, people actually, you know, for every seat for for tomorrow's election in iran, we have 51 candidates, for every seat we have 51 candidates, we have about 15 thousand people that are running for 290 seats and in the united states you have..." democrat, you have a republican and the third party candidates have a difficult time

getting their name on the ballot, so you normally for every seat have three or four at most candidates and the people's choices are quite limited in iran they get to choose from average over 50 people and that that when you have more choices you can bas basically have easier time in terms of realizing what may be good for your future and to add to that stat and to ask you this question here, it's 48,847 people actually registered as candidates, that's that's a high number, and then they had to get vetted by the guardian council obviously, but still you had 15,200 or 75% of the total hotels where they received final approval to run for office. so you have a wide rate of representation there uh, why do you think the us limits its party

system to the way and i don't want to make this a iran versus us voting system, but we need to somewhat put things into perspective, the us has just those two parties, which obviously um and they all say it doesn't make difference there, what are your views on that? i mean we can totally make an iran versus us uh thing because the us can't hold a candle, i mean a lot of americans here are under the impression that they are the all-out democracy. but as you said there's there's so many blocks and there's so many road blocks and there's so many limitations on running for office and the fact of the matter is that this two party system they have massive amounts of wealth, they have massive amount massive amounts of donors, private donors that they in turn have to then scratch their back once they're in office. if you as an independent have great ideas and you want to run a platform that's for the people, you are essentially going against the banks, you're going... against the corporations and that is very hard to do when you are a working class uh salary, let's call

it, and so basically you are running against millionaires, you're running against billionaires and whether they'll produce smear campaigns against you, whether they'll just censor you, whether they won't even take you seriously, and that's actually how the mainstream media actually in the united states actually has huge hand in this, because they won't even hear out thoughts from third party candidates, they won't even hear out thoughts from fringe candidates within their own parties for example. example, actually i don't want to get into examples here, but there are certain, democrats that are running against zionists, the entire party consists of both parties uh that won't even give a a thought to another candidate outside of joe biden right now, those candidates exists on the ballot, but the entire democratic machine is all behind joe biden, despite how unpopular he is, despite how much negative media attention uh he gets especially from right-wing circles and despite constant protests against him from both the united states left-wing, the united states right wing, and independent

circles as well, this man is has the lowest presidential approval rating um in in perhaps over a century, and this person is being champion as the ticket, and the entire establishment is saying, either vote for this guy or you'll get trump. meanwhile, even on the trump side of things, on the republican side of things, you see the entire state uh in some senses even try to limit donald trump, i don't like donald trump, i think he's a murderous imperialist, i think he's a bankster, i think he's a terrible person, but you even see how like a quote unquote outsider, lot of people call him an outsider. but he's he's part of the same system. um, they try to limit him too, just because he he, the way he like talks about america, lot of people found about that, but as you can clearly see, there's limitations upon limitations, if you don't play the political ball game, they will they then they they're not interested in anything that you have to say. all right, let's look at some of the details here about the representation for

dati, and it's quite incredible when you take a look at uh, i'm looking at the the three uh, religious representation, women and young people, where the parliament has 290 members, five which represent religious minorities, jews, syrians, zorastrians, armenians, women, 1,713 women, more than double the number in the last elections and young people, also we're looking at nearly 70% of them aged between 30 and 50, so that's a 55% increase, why are we looking at such increases in terms the representation in these three? categories overall like the religious ones in particular though the women and the young people. the number of educated women have been increasing in iran significantly since the 1979 revolution and one reason you have more women

running for offices because you have more educated women in the country. you the literacy rate before the islamic revolution was less than 50%, today is over 90%, and one reason iranians continue to come to the polls, given all the sanctions and economic difficulties, it's because of the services that that the islamic republic has provided in terms of healthcare, you now the... average age in iran was 53 before 1979 and today is almost 80 80 years of age, so when you increase your average age by 27 some years, that means better food, more medicine, better healthcare, so these are the services

that the government has been able to provide things that people did not have during the... last time, although shah used to sell much more oil and was not under sanctions, so these are the progress that people can see, and that's one reason they continue to come to elections and participate in the political process. let me just also say something, because you mentioned in in in your previous talk about the guardian council, you know... "the system, the political system in iran is is set up in a way that political parties cannot disqualify candidates, so in the united states and many other countries, if you want to run for office, you generally have to be part of major political party, that's right, and to be and to be viable

candidate, that's what they call viable candidate." that you have to raise so much money for example in the united states and there other criterias and the party bosses actually decide who is viable candidate and who is not a viable candidate, so there is lot of limitations imposed by political parties and people get disqualified and for reasons that they really don't know, in iran, it doesn't work like that, if you want to become a parliament member, all you have to do is pick up your birth certificate and go and fill out a form, and if you're a citizen of iran, you know, few years ago they they put this education criteria, that people have

to have a minimum, degree in order to run, but if if you if you satisfy that, if you don't have a criminal background, then then you actually can run for office without party was telling you whether you can do this or not, but since this process is open to everybody, more than 85 million people, then there needs to be a vetting process in order to make sure that for example, that minimum degree requirement is met to make sure that the people don't have a criminal background or other other laws that are quite quite apparent and quite open for people to see. "and that's that's why you get some candidate disqualified because they don't mean they don't meet the minimum requirements that that are they are supposed to have, but if i if i

wanted to choose, i rather go to a process that is open and qualifications are open for everybody to see in comparison to a process that some party boss decides whether i'm a..." viable candidate or not, so in that aspect, because you know this this qualification of the guardian council is something that western media athlets always talk about, right? but when you look at it closely, you realize that this is actually a more democratic process than what you ex, what you experience in a number of western countries? indeed, well, here you have, mean i'm not trying to um elevate the status of what is a professor at the university of tehran? but the discussion and the content and what he said are all up uh exercised in democracy within the realm of what he was describing uh and that just shows again what

my first question was which which is the notion of democracy and i'd like to find out why it is that countries like the us and other western countries or any country that tries to undermine the democratic system in iran um is trying so hard to do that and trying to dissuade people from going to the uh polling stations what what types of motivations do you think they have? yes, western countries will always try to utilize another country in order to paint itself in a better image, because they know, western countries rather, they know that they do not function for the sake of people, they don't function for the sake of masses, they function for the sake of very select elite few, the billionaires, the ruling class, and these are the representatives of the ruling class, and so when you have other countries, other governments that... actually give their people not only direct participation in voting, but rather direct participation in being part of the political process, then that raises some eyebrows, especially for

americans who live in a road block after road block electoral system, which is by the way in of itself extremely racist, i mean we have a jerry mandert system where the entire house of representatives basically given votes based off red line districts where for example black countries get... less votes than white counties, they effectively white states and white counties have lot more voting power than minority counties and states, and so there in and of itself is a gigantic limitation, and so they don't want people to analyze this, so what they do is they go on the offensive and say this country is a dictatorship, this country is totalitarian state, and while they're saying this, they're saying to people in that country, boycott your own system, well why would they boycott their own system? look at the united states voting turn now, you can go to the polls, but lot of people don't even believe in the polls, because nothing changes here, nothing changes here for the people,

the people have had the same quality of life, which is not that great for decades now, the minimum wage hasn't even been raised a federal level, they leave it up to locals and state elections that are aggressively dominated by the two party system, those two party system. systems again do not work for the american people, they're dominated solely by the elite few that have billions in politics. thank you very much for that, we do appreciate we just fresh out of time. there political commentator from chicago, your pleasure, university of tehran professor spoke to us from tehran, thank you to you both, and with that we come to end for this edition of the spotlight from the team, it's goodbye.

it seems the israeli occupation will conclude the grand operation in the city of khan unis in southern gaza within days, withdrawing thereafter to the newly established security zone along the border with gaza, just as it did weeks ago in the city of gaza and its surroundings to the north. does this mean that the next step is to begin the ground operation in? it appears that the decision regarding the operation is still pending, not only for field related reasons, but lot of regional players prefer the negotiating path to end designus aggression against gaza, hence all eyes are now a possible improved prisoner exchange deal, both in form and content compared to the first paris formula reached between qatar, egypt, the united states and the zianist israeli entity last january. gaza talks underway this week on the mediast stream.

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