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.
That is how is how its pronounced in us news so have these people never seen us news and did not know how its pronounced here. Heck there was a joke around the time of the carter hotage crises and I don’t even remember how it goes except it depended on iran being pronounced iran. I have not idea how else it would be pronounced in english although there are so many cases of countries being pronounced differently in the native languages that I assume most are pronounced differently. I heard the term nippon extensively before I ever made the connection. I mean I didn’t I think I asked someone why is was called ntt.