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The "it costs more to shoot down than it costs us to build" logic applies to asymmetrical warfare, not to a hypothetical direct war between Iran and Israel.
Iran is not some terrorist group living in the hills. They are a country which has actual targets for Israel to retaliate against. Here's how the math might work.
Cost of drones: X
Cost to shoot down drones: 3X
Cost of retaliatory mission: 5X
Damage caused by retaliatory mission: 100X
This last step is what Israel can do to Iran which they can't do to, for example, the Houthis. Iran has plump targets. How much is their oil industry worth?
Israel has proven they can fly a mission over Iran which Iran can't detect, then assassinate a target whose location is top secret. It's a stunning display of power. And Iran may lack the capacity to retaliate at all except via its terrorist proxies.
And escalation means that Iran's top leaders will be killed. They can be got to. No one is safe.
Russia has been intensively bombing Ukraine with thousands of missiles for several years and they have not yet broken a country of 30-40 million. Iran is twice as populous. There is nothing that Israel can do to greatly harm Iran short of a nuclear strike or a US invasion, at which point we may learn how well developed the Iranian nuclear program really is. Assassinating leaders does not matter, it's totally irrelevant.
Meanwhile, Iran can fire off hundreds or thousands of missiles in a non-telegraphed attack for a change, overwhelm the Iron Dome and demolish Israel's first-world high-tech economy. Israel is a small country, it is inherently easier to bomb and wreck than Iran. Nobody is going to build chip factories in a warzone. Oil is stuck in the ground, laptop workers and tech companies can leave for safer climates.
Does Iran want to get into a massive painful struggle with Israel and presumably the US? No. But their patience is not unlimited. It's not 2003 anymore, Americans have gotten a little less gullible about these Middle Eastern wars. It's not 2003 anymore, Western firepower apparently can't deal with little countries like Yemen. Times have changed and Israel should adjust its tactics to meet the new situation.
Russia isn't waging a total war of destruction with Ukraine. It would be extremely easy for them to destroy power delivery infrastructure and this water supply if they wanted to.
If anything, despite what western propaganda would tell you, they've tried to minimize civilian casualties. Meanwhile the Ukrainians are using civilian housing, hospitals, schools, what have you
They have not tried to maximally maximize it, and they are not yet fully on Syrian bombing strategy but... They have not exactly tried to minimize them
We know that it is not extremely easy because they tried and succeeded only partially, that is why they now switched mostly to destruction of power stations. It is not clear how well they succeed but it seems to be going better for Russia. Still, far from "extremely easy".
(unless you claim that they kept attacking power infrastructure because they had too many rockets and no good use for them or something)
One notable reason is that it is hard for them to escalate further without use of nuclear weapons. They already using nearly full available resources (OK, not all forces were pulled from NATO and Chinese border - though very significant part was).
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