Neither of them was democratic as in liberal, free press, human rights etc etc. Iran afaik was a full blown dictatorship before the islamic revolution (it's still a dictatorship, but different), Lebanon's history is more complicated but I stand by my view that it was never a liberal democracy, definitely not in the last 40 years.
>Iran afaik was a full blown dictatorship before the islamic revolution
Yes, but he was talking about before that wasn't he? Iran was a democracy (flawed, but still) before the US–UK alliance overthrew the parliamentary system and installed a puppet dictator, to keep stealing their oil.
"The reign of Reza Shah was totalitarian and dictatorial at a time when totalitarian governments and dictatorships were common in the Middle East and the world[8] and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was some years in the future."
