Reading between the lines of a lot of the reporting:

Iran has had their shit kicked in by Israel during direct conflict, so they’ve been funding and training proxies to do their dirty work for ages now.

Israel saw an opportunity. A chunk of the Iranian military brass was in the same place at the same time - and most importantly - were outside of Iran. The catch was that they were meeting in an embassy, so making that meeting go boom would be a no-no. And before you ask yes, that is a technical term.

Figuring that opportunities like this didn’t come by very often Israeli brass took the risk and made the meeting go boom. To minimize political damage abroad they didn’t officially take credit for the attack. This is a fig leaf, but that kind of thing matters in international relations.

Now all that was left was to deal with the retaliation, which came in the form of a huge missile/drone barrage. While just about everything got intercepted, a few Israeli pilots have been quoted as saying that the volume of incoming fire was greater than anything they’d trained for. Even without significant damage on the ground it was a big deal.

Afterwards, Iran literally said “the issue is settled”. No, really. They told everyone that it was time to start climbing back down the ladder of escalation.

So here’s the real question: why isn’t Israeli leadership just chilling out? Because you don’t just get off the ladder of escalation, you climb down off of it. Publicly asking for a list of targets is pretty low key. It sounds scary, but is ultimately of little consequence. Every major player has their target lists already, it’s just bluster.

If my assessment is correct the next step is a super public statement made by Iranian leadership condemning Israel (more than usual) and/or releasing some kind of damning intelligence if they have it.

EDIT: Hey, look at that the very next day an Iranian diplomat in London accused Israel of trying to draw the US into a war with them. Looks like they went with the “strong denouncement” route!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/16/netanyahu-aims-to-trap-west-into-war-across-middle-east-warns-iranian-diplomat

The bombing of the embassy was an escalation. Intentional.

Where you get into theories, is how does Israel benefit from an escalated shooting war? Does it get them international support so that their genocide in Gaza is ignored? Does it get the current incumbent president more time within an emergency context so they don’t have to deal with political pressure internally? Fighting external wars to solve internal problems is a traditional tool dictators have fallen upon in the past

They want to draw in the us, they have bomb em Biden, acting the victim will cause some people to act like they are one, they want to draw in the us

Iranian generals often instruct and train Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists, since they’re Iranian proxies. Those same groups continously terrorize Israel.

Iran regularly calls for the destruction of Israel, though generally chooses to fight using their proxies rather than directly attacking Israel. Israel also targets Iranian proxies in Syria on the regular. Why they allegedly hit the Iranian embassy this time, nobody knows. Keep in mind that Israel never officially acknowledged that strike as theirs. People simply assume it because of all of the above.