You just spent three paragraphs indignantly restating what the Iranians said in one sentence.
Not quite. Sparta's governing system is closer to Romes and what we call "our Republic one" then some people actually know. Democratic is what Athens was. Sparta was a Republic. When speaking of Sparta people don't call them a democracy, but republic. The Spartans did not require the people to vote on matters directly themselves by each and every citizen as Athens did. The Spartan constitution placed that responsibility in the hands of the deliberative body that was chosen from amongst the people. The Romans would latter refer to this as "res publica", or "representation of the public." The Romans adopted the Spartan form of government, not the Athenian democracy, as their own. What Sparta and Rome had in common was they were both republics with strong democratic traditions, governing systems not found in eastern cultures of that era.