lions; how were the laryngeals pronounced?

(1) It may be that lions did not live in the PIE homeland, as various
daughter languages have different words for "lion": Greek [le(w)
ont]], Iranian [shir], Indian [simha] or [singha]. In old times the
lion occurred all through North Africa and the Middle East and Persia
and Greece and Macedonia, at least.

(2) How certain is it that the H2 and H3 laryngeals were pronouced
[x] and [xw]? I tend to think that they were like the Semitic
epiuglottal fricatives: H3 as ayin, and H2 as in Arabic [muH2ammad]
(the prophet) and [h2aram] = "sacred". How much influence is there
from modern linguists wanting an easy way to pronounce laryngeal-
containing words in classes and discussions?, since Arabic epiglottal
fricatives can be difficut for Europeans to learn?