No that’s too easy.
Give hope to Iran / Islamic world for a few months, then take it away.
Unfortunately I’m not sure their current audience is gonna pick up the implied threat.
I don't think they did it this time, but they have in the past.
It's also a bit unreasonable to launch live munitions that have some 90% probability of being intercepted by a given system on a good day, while intending for "just a warning"
Because they declared them loudly.
When they launched the drone strikes on Israel, they gave Israel and the US warning time so they could be intercepted. The second time, they gave them much less warning time.
The Iranians have a long history of negotiating loudly via their actions, which anyone who's spent any reasonable amount of time studying Iran knows and has seen in action. They're really not a mystery, they're very transparent, we just don't like what they're saying.
David takes a small rock and whips it at a sensitive spot on Goliath’s ankles that most people don’t know about (Diego Garcia)
David knows Goliath will probably dodge it, and most likely kick it away given it’s importance, but there’s a point being made by shooting: if it hits then that’s a win, but if gets knocked down it’s a warning that they know where they need to hit for it to hurt
It also publicizes Iran-NK military cooperation on ballistics development, which the Biden admin warned about [0], as well as Iran-Russia military cooperation (which was obviously much less under-the-radar).
It also shows the merger of the Ukraine conflict with the West Asia conflict, and was a major reason why Fiona Hill argued we entered an unavoidable polycrisis in 2022 [1].
[0] - https://www.janes.com/osint-insights/defence-news/us-officia...
[1] - https://xcancel.com/FrankRGardner/status/2027098560647348410...
Those who they wanted to send a message to got the message, and it's a significant message up the escalation chain.
Additionally, the fact that this is being very publicly disclosed and discussed in British media in a manner that RAF Akhrioti wasn't is also a massive signal.