I don't think this is what they were saying. The political and economic state in Iran is about as far from Afghanistan as possible. Iran/Persia has a long history of national identity and has a highly organized society. Afghanistan is a tribal region and still does not have a sense of nation or really a mature sense of political identity. Iran is also a major power player in Asia with a far stronger economy, with a GDP in the top quartile in the world, and with one of the best performing stock exchanges in Asia in the last decade, while Afghanistan has for many years been the poorest country in Asia.

That said, Iran has a political structure that owes little to no obedience to the will of the people, with a non-elected supreme leader and guardian council (half of which are appointed by the supreme leader) who have the final say in all political decisions, so the actions of Iran should not be mistaken as the will of the people, even in the loose sense that representative democracies are.