I’ll admit I was rather ignorant growing up and the first time I had a conversation with someone and I pronounced Iran as “I ran” everyone roasted the shit outta me and shut me down, which like fair whatever. But my point is the pronunciation is secondary if you get the concept; that’s kinda the point of language and accents in general. If we have to pronounce every country or place as its residents call it then we should roast and ignore every English speaker that says “Germany” instead of Deutschland.
Reminds me of the “kuh-TAR” vs “CUT-urr” thing with Qatar in American english. AFAIK neither is technically more correct than the other but there seems to be an ideological split? As in, conservatives tend to call it “kuh-TAR” and progressives tend to call it “CUT-urr”. I’ve been corrected in pronunciation both ways, so people seem to care a great deal about it. So puzzling.