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.

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esseph an hour ago | parent [-]

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".

	▲	quesera 39 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		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.