The solution I have applied to this situation is to simply place an absolute loading image in the DOM, which will be covered by the iframe layer after the iframe is loaded.
The z-index of the iframe should be (loading's z-index + 1), or just higher.
For example:
.loading-image { position: absolute; z-index: 0; }
.iframe-element { position: relative; z-index: 1; }
Hope this helps if no javaScript solution did. I do think that CSS is best practice for these situations.
Best regards.