>>63870538 (OP)
Missiles were not effective because of the advanced anti air system.
If you have a really advanced anti air system and not a worse copy of old Russian mediocre systems sending planes would result in a lot of lost planes which are far more expensive than missiles.
The real lessons here are:
1) big slow drones over long distances are easy targets.
2) the most expensive and extensive and modern anti air system has about 90% to 95% interoception rate against a wide mixed missiles selection. Which is great in most cases but still shows that if you are an aircraft carrier or target of a MIRV nuke your air defenses regardless how good won't likely be able to defend completely against large missiles barrages
3) hypersonic missiles seem the only ones able to get trough with a minimum level or reliability. So anti missile tech needs to adapt because if the backwards Iranian have begun to be able to make copies of such missiles we can expect the Chinese to have far better version and orders of magnitude more in numbers.
4) doing SEAD against a country with no air force and using mostly Soviet equipment and replicas while you have F-35 and long range stealth radar homing missiles is quite doable. In particular if you manage to take them by surprise and smash their anti air systems on the opening days. It helps when the opponent was under sanctions for decades so only the Russians would sell them something.
5)Also Israel also used a lot of long range missiles in the opening barrage to take out Iranian air defense just Israel preference is on air launched missiles rather than ground launched missiles but ultimately it's just that one is boosted up by a plane and one by a booster stage
7) if Iran had planes instead of missiles it would have been even more embarrassing as it's limited tech would have turned that fight into a turkey shoot without Iran even being able to retaliate
8) missiles were the only affordable option for Iran to have some deterrent
