There's no reason for Italy and Iran/Iraq to be pronounced similarly. (Cf Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Idaho?)
But FWIW, the EYE-rack thing is because GWB (most prominently, but others before and after) intentionally mispronounced the name of the country, in a "real american" kind of way, and also to annoy SAD-dumb Hussein as a kind of "we're stupid but we're going to kill you anyway" kind of psyop. Or maybe just "we disrespect you in advance of killing you"?
Americans of other political persuasions usually pronounce the names correctly.
I've lived in over a dozen states and I've never heard either called anything other than EYE-(ran/raq) in conversation.
The extremely, I mean extremely rare occasion when someone pronounces it differently on TV, it's almost like they get side-eyed by other people as trying to "talk fancy".
Well, I've lived in four states in the last 20 years.
Anecdotally, the pronunciation popularity has split neatly along statewide-prominent political lines. For my four example states, three were correct/respectful, and one wrong/disrespectful.
Correct pronunciation has also had an inverse correlation with the rates of active/former military employment, which might be more directly indicative. And a positive correlation with education levels. So the answer is in there somewhere, I suspect.
National TV "news" programming might have a style guide which dictates pandering to the audience by speaking in real american, no matter how well-educated the hosts might be.
I've been thinking about this a bit more and I think we're actually talking about two (or more) different pronunciations.
There is a VERY hard "I" that Lindsey Graham does. I think that's the specific version you're talking about, and that one is intentionally offputting. It's like "EYEEE RACK", but that does sound different from "AYERAK" or "EYEROQ".
Yes, I think you're right. The middle ground, which I'll phoneticize as "uh-RON" or even "uh-RAN" is what I hear in most places.
The effete "ih-RAHN" is the voice that you mentioned might get side-eyes. This is the closest to how Iranians that I know pronounce it, except that we don't have a phoneme quite like their R, which to my ears sounds like a D, L, and R all smashed together.
But these side-eyes are mostly fair, I think. It's like Americans prounouncing France as "Frawhce", or Paris as "Pahdee". Ostentatious and pretentious, for an English-speaker.
And Lindsey's provocative "EYE-ran" is very present in some locations, I think because GHWB and GWB's affected pronunciations were pounded into the American consciousness during Gulf Wars 1 and 2. Although Reagan did it too, IIRC, and I'm not sure about Clinton.
But FWIW, the EYE-rack thing is because GWB (most prominently, but others before and after) intentionally mispronounced the name of the country, in a "real american" kind of way, and also to annoy SAD-dumb Hussein as a kind of "we're stupid but we're going to kill you anyway" kind of psyop. Or maybe just "we disrespect you in advance of killing you"?
Americans of other political persuasions usually pronounce the names correctly.