the word "iran" is a transliteration of an ethnic designation that iranians call themselves. there is no correct spelling, other than one we decide, by converting their alphabet to ours. but the iranians never wrote much. at the height of the iranian empire, they mostly wrote in aramaic, and later on actually wrote a lot in greek, which is weird because the greeks were their enemies.

the iranians call their country arya.

iranians call themselves aryans.

iran and aryan are exactly the same word - etymologically, functionally, literally. they mean exactly the same thing.

this is the reason the germans were obsessed with conquering iran in world war two. they sent special designations to persia and afghanistan. they were trying to break through the urals for liebensraum, but they were actually trying to get to iran.

the iran=aryan equation is not a debate. this is basic fact; nobody will argue about this. the use of the word aryan in archaeological texts was initially borrowed from iran and only co-opted by race theorists later on. it's literally the same word. however, linguists will get very mad at you for suggesting that eire - the word the irish use for ireland - is the same word as iran, but their arguments don't held up. for example, they argue that the roman word for the island was hibernia. but that's like saying that mexico couldn't be the indigenous name for mexicans because cortez called them indians. 

i think it's probably correct to point out that the irish and iranians basically use the same word for themselves - eire in ireland and arya in iran - as evidence of the indo-european migrations. these two groups are retaining an ancient self-designation in the furthest reaches of their ethnic expansion, the westernmost extent and southernmost extent.

what i'm getting at is that iran is not a "middle eastern country" in the way that iraq is and trying to draw any sort of parallel between iran and iraq is ignorant. iran is not arab, and they have resisted islamization for centuries. the iranians are not a distant, foreign culture. iran, like russia, is a fundamentally european civilization, on the outskirts of europe's geography. you should think of them as being more like us and less different than us.