Dear Jim,
sorry if I cannot comment on this, as I'm not aware of any relation between graphene and iridium. Can you expand or point to a reference?
And probably yes, I suppose that graphene is difficult to work with in the lab, also because of its unprecedented properties like two-dimensionality and its stiffness, and whatnot. But then anything is difficult to work with when it's new, and simple to work with once the techniques have been established. Obvious examples come to mind, take Bose-Einstein condensation for a recent one which took so long to be realized experimentally, but is now produced on a daily basis in many labs around the world.