The American English pronunciation   may be heard in U.S. media. Max Fisher in ''The Washington Post'' prescribed  for ''Iran'', while proscribing . ''The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language'', in the dictionary's 2014 Usage Ballot, addressed the topic of the pronunciations of Iran and Iraq. According to this survey, the pronunciations  and  were deemed almost equally acceptable, while  was preferred by most panelists participating in the ballot. With regard to the  pronunciation, more than 70% of the panelists deemed it unacceptable. Among the reasons given by those panelists were that  has "hawkish connotations" and sounds "angrier", "xenophobic", "ignorant", and "not... cosmopolitan". The  pronunciation remains standard and acceptable, reflected in the entry for ''Iran'' in the American Heritage Dictionary itself, as well as in each of the other major dictionaries of American English.