also joining us is shabir risi, political commentator who joins us from chicago. welcome to you both fzadi, 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. i mean, if you want a 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, where the members of parliament are elected in multi and single seat constituencies, the list is rather long as to how this is democratic exercise, 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 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 dictatorships including the shah's dictatorship and they obviously don't like iranians. uh running their own country and opposing western hegemony in this part of the world. well, should we guess that didn't waste any time going after the us sear 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 is 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 zionists, two 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 b'

years and those would have to be of course the trump years that were full of you know chaos and just a 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, 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 uh, the young people, and also in terms of the voter turnout. i like to ask you about uh, the voter turnout uh issue, fueradi. i'm looking here at uh, iran's uh voter turn out and 209, it was the record 84.8%. the lowest was back in 1990, 37.1% 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? 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 when you have a congressional election and and presidential elections on the same day, 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 water turn out in iran, and

the us government officials have this audacity 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 move to new hampshire, yesterday was michigan, i haven't had the chance to look at michigan. but in iowa the turnout was less than 15%, it was 14 point something, similar thing was was was in new hampshire, and you know 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 $1 and all the television ads all the competition that that looks competition but but as the guest said in chicago you 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 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, 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 in in a... average over 50 people and that that that when you have more choices you can 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 uh here uh it's

48,847 people who 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 array 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, um, 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 it an iran versus us uh thing, because the us can't hold a candle, i mean a lot of americans here 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 with this two-party

system, they have massive amounts of wealth, they have massis 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, we are going against the corporations, and that is very hard to do when you are a working class, 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, actually i don't want to get into examples here, but there are certain democrats that are running again. what 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 exist 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? 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 sense is even try to limit donald trump, i don't like donald trump, i think he's a murderous imperialist, i think he's a bank... 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 forizadi and it's quite incredible when you take a look at uh, i'm looking at the the three religious representation, women and young people, where uh the parliament has 290 members, five which represent religious minorities, jews, syrians, therastrians, armenians, women, uh, 1,713 women, more than double the number uh in the last elections and young people uh also were looking at uh nearly 70% of them aged between 30 and 50 uh so that's a 55% increase, why are we looking at such increases in terms of the representation in

these three categories overall like the religious ones in particular though the women and the young people? you know the number of educated women have been increasing in iran significantly since the 1979 revolution and one reason you have more uh uh 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 health careare, 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 20 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 shows time, although shah used to sell much more oil and was not an 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 your previous talk about the guardian council, you know the

system, the political system in iran is is set up 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 a viable candidate, that's what they call viable candidate, you have to raise so much money for example in the united. states and other criterias and the party bosses actually decide who is the 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, 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 cr'. not 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 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 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're supposed to have, but if i if i wanted to choose, i rather go to a process that is open and qualifications are. and 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 this this qualification of the guardian cancel is something that western media athles always talk about, but when you look at it closely, you realize that this is actually a more democratic process than what you what you

experience in a number of western countries, indeed, well, here you have a... risby, i mean, i'm not trying to um, elevate the status of fuzar as a professor at the university of tehran, but the discussion and the content and what he said are all up uh exercising democracy within the realm of what he was describing, 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 and end 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 counties get less votes than white counties they effectively white states and white counties have. lot more voting power than minority countries 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, um, 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 local and state elections that are aggressively dominated by the two party system, those two party 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. she there, political commentator from chicago for 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.

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