Because they aren’t pronounced the same in their respective countries/languages. As mentioned elsewhere, Iran is “ee-raan”. Iraq is more like “eh-raaq”. They

Because they aren’t pronounced the same in their respective countries/languages. As mentioned elsewhere, Iran is “ee-raan”. Iraq is more like “eh-raaq”. They have different initial vowels which are obvious in Persian/Arabic script, but harder to translate into latin script with variable vowel pronunciations in English.