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Seems too small to reliably overwhelm air defenses. Perhaps an attempt to let Israel know that Iran really thinks Israel overstepped the boundaries of this proxy war they've been fighting. Nothing says "cut that out" as sincerely as high explosives, after all.
I do sometimes wonder how a military determines the appropriate size of a strike to launch in order to send a sufficiently stern message but with minimal risk of actually crossing a line that isn't easily uncrossed.
Requires accurate estimates of your opponent's defensive capabilities and expect that they'll be able to intercept enough that the damage is limited.
I suppose the selection of targets is more important overall, if you can mitigate loss of life AND not strike something that the other side finds particularly valuable then there's less risk of some miscalculation causing worse consequences.
One memorable scene from the SciFi Series The Expanse sees the forces of the Earth Military blow up one of Mars' Moons which was itself the response to the Martian Military destroying one of Saturn's moons which housed an earth-controlled research station. The argument being "a barely populated rock in exchange for a barely-populated rock" was a fair tit-for-tat to discourage further aggression.
BUT, (light spoilers) the actual underlying intention of certain players on Earth was to trigger an all-out war and they were hoping that blowing up a moon that close to the home planet would actually lead to immediate retaliation/escalation. (/light spoilers)
I thought it was a good illustration of how these sorts of calls end up being made, AND the delicate dance that it can entail when you risk misapprehending your opponent and what you think is a slap on the wrist could be an unforgivable offense to them.
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Iran apparently referred to this as a “combined operation” so it’s possible that this is just the opening salvo and there will be attacks on other fronts.
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