It is definitely not in major cities, otherwise we would've already known.

It might be that Iran doesn't want to cause any real damage (as then Israel would destroy its oil industry and nuclear sites in retaliation) — it only wants to save face. For that, a media picture of "hundreds of missiles falling on Israel" would perfectly suffice — they can sell it domestically. Just bomb some bushes and deserts and call it a day.

There is extensive footage online: below is an example with multiple attempts at interception in a location which, presumably, must be somewhere "important" for those systems to be present. I'd argue it's difficult to claim such barrages can be "tracked, detected, ignored". As for the casualties, it's only been a short period of time, one would hope they do not increase as the situation is assessed.

https://x.com/UKR_Report/status/1841172196678311945

Ballistic missile warheads have flown at these speeds for many years. The term "hypersonic" when it refers to missiles is frustratingly imprecise; hypersonic in the sense you're using it refers to more modern weapons capable of substantial maneuvers and not restricted to a ballistic trajectory. Iran is incapable of producing these types of weapons.

Note that plain old ballistic missile warheads are quite challenging to intercept. Past operational systems used nuclear warheads on the interceptors.

"Hypersonic" is a misnomer, most long range rockets hit hypersonic speeds. "Hypersonic" refers to steerable hypersonic glide vehicles that can turn to make them harder to intercept. There is no evidence yet that any of them were used in this attack.

If it's the Fattah-1, it was developed in-house by the IRGC.

Having said that, I have no idea if there was some tech transfer from Russia to Iran to enable it.

There were serious criticisms, including calls for him to step down.

I'm not aware of any. Can you point to specifics?

Deliberate misunderstandings or just a general incomprehension of how deterrence works.

You use deterrence to prevent a bigger conflict. It's on Israel and its leadership (Bibi) that they used the lull between their increasingly brazen attacks against their opponents as an excuse to launch a full scale invasion of a neighbouring country.