You’re really going to have to withhold judgment on damage reports from entities with deeply vested interests both domestically and internationally to not talk about damage. From the video footage, it looks like damage was done to military targets deep inside Israel and that’s all that’s needed. The prevailing Israeli strategic hypothesis was that their air defense prevented Iran from striking inside Israel without exposing itself. The video footage appears to invalidate this hypothesis. For a very paltry amount of money, Iran causes Israeli air defense to consume hundreds of millions of dollars of materiel and still fail to stop the attack. A slightly larger attack will therefore do more damage, and a coordinated multi-actor attack will do even more. That’s all the victory Iran needed, it broke the taboo of attacking Israel directly, it broke the hypothesis of impenetrability, and it did so while giving Israel advanced warning. Remember, during the strike, the skies in Gaza were quiet because Israel downed its entire air force.

No, Iran did not launch a decapitation attack, no it didn’t launch a massive attack. It launched a precisely measured attack and it was the most cost effective attack we’ve seen so far. Couple this with Iran seizing a massive Israeli shipping vessel and gathering support from allies, and this is a major development in the conflict.

It will be Israel, the USA, and Western Europe who will expand this conflict, and that will bring further international condemnation and collaboration. If Iran went significantly bigger, not only would it risk strategic depletion, it would also be more politically ambiguous for its allies and future allies.

But all accounts except for total damage done, this was a successful operation.