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".

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quesera 2 hours 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.

	▲	esseph 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		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".