Actually, that got me thinking of it differently. It sounds more like an ISNULL check rather than an IF check. That wouldn't be a bad option to have built in, but it's also extremely easy to script...
alias isnull {
if ($1 == $null) { return $2 }
else { return $1 }
}
Use:
//var %x = $isnull($1,default)
If $1 is null, then it will set the variable to whatever is entered as the default value. Otherwise, the variable is set to $1.
As far as the original feature request, I see value in a built-in $isnull even if it's easy to script (and is really just about the same thing as $iif()), but that isn't really a replacement for $iif() because as I originally mentioned, it is specifically designed for checking on $null and not for checking on anything else.