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Given the effectiveness of missile interception, I think it is hard to argue with the results. From Israel's point of view, the Iranian regime already hates them maximally and is kept in check purely by military consideration, not a lack of desire to wipe Israel of the map.
Purely military speaking, trading two generals plus change against a random civilian is a tit-for-tat game that Israel wins. There is also the costs of attack and defense to consider, which might be more favorable to Iran (launching a rocket is way easier than intercepting one), but on a scale of a few hundred missiles this is a minor concern.
I would guess that Iran wanted higher casualties, but also did not want to invite instant retaliation. I guess they might have wanted to achieve a dozen causalities or so. They erred on the side of too few, which is a lot better than erring on the side of too many for everyone. On the plus side, they learned something about Israel's missile defense capabilities.
I think you are right that killing the generals in the embassy might have been a bad move for Israel because of tail-heavy risks. They put Iran in a spot where the decision makers felt they had to retaliate not for military reasons but just to remain credible to their own peers. If they had killed a few hundred Israelis instead, then that would have put Israel in exactly the same spot, resulting in a war which both sides would lose.
I think it comes down to what a general is worth, militarily speaking. If Persia had managed to kill Alexander 'the Great' early on, history would have gone quite differently, but we are not in the antique any more. Instead of depending on having a king who is by chance a military genius, meritocratic systems common in the modern world should churn out a reliable stream of competent generals. From my gut feeling, modern militaries do not depend on a genius who sees a weakness during battle and exploits it in a way which nobody has ever thought of before but more on skilled but replaceable craftspersons employing their craft. You do not need Alan Turing to build Amazon, after all.
So killing two generals seems more of a papercut than a decisive blow, and Israel's actions can be likened to climbing a wall free solo: the fact that it went well for them this time does not make it any less foolish.
This assumes that Iranian leaders are constrained to believe in the Israeli government and media's official reports. They are not. Iran is free to spread to its own people that significant damage was done to Israel and that the Jewish world media conspiracy is covering it up.
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The overlap between 'general' and 'political faction leader' in nondemocratic countries is often a very small circle. While there may be limited military value in a single general being killed, any relationships he had are killed along with him. Organizational continuity being disrupted, if not outright destroyed, has a very high value even in an ostensibly unified policy. No one may remain to verify which ongoing operation needs its next tranche of funding, for example.
Nevertheless, the Iranian attack straddles the line between 'attempted saturation attack' and 'internal stakeholder presentation'. The lack of concurrent Hezbollah launches leans towards the latter, but the fact that Hezbollah still hasn't been triggered means this was a costly exercise. There were other ways to demonstrate an attempt at striking the Little Satan without revealing launch sites and expending a limited ballistic missile inventory.
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Most countries spend most of their time at peace. Meritocratic systems tend to produce generals that are really good at politics.
That's why countries spend the first couple years of a war (if they're lucky) fighting the war they prepared for.
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Generals have a lot of connections, within their government, within their army, and even outside their own country, that can't be easily replaced. There's a lot of human capital there that isn't really replaceable very easily. The knowledge and experience a general has is pretty hard to simply build institutionally, and it isn't every day you get a good leader, no matter how well-structured your institutions are.
I have no doubt that someone like Soleimani was absolutely irreplaceable. I don't think his death is the difference between greatness and ruin in the way Alexander might have been, but I still do not think Iran has recovered from his loss (and thank god for that).
Besides, kill enough generals, and you won't really have any replacements lined up- you can't really recruit someone with that level of command ability in a day.
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