Its ironic because for some people the Russians were a failure because some of the Ukranian Air Force is still flying but now that the US and Israel combined can't keep the Iranians from flying sorties in Cold War gear, "its to be expected"
Two entirely different situations (to be exact, same as for first few days over Ukraine - which is arguably the reason it turned out the way it did for Russia).
US and Israel "rolled in" air defense carpet stage by stage, thoroughly. But as Iran is just a big, mountainous country, and number of aircraft over Iran is not infinite, nor support aircraft can afford to fly over Iran(yet) - it's possible to sneak out a few small low altitude strike sorties by just via timing sorties when blue strikegroups eggress.
But this is exactly "in-between", because meeting western groups is hopeless for Iranian aircraft - not only they can't fight back, there's apparently no even firm picture of blue aircraft presense any longer.
VKS doesn't fly over FLOT at all - and as such, it is always a manageable threat in modern air combat, simply because under GAC you can always turn away and energy kill any attack. Granted, sortie is wasted, but you'll survive.
I remember that during the 12 Days War, the Shaheds wouldn't make it past Jordan. That they are making it all the way to Tel Aviv means the AD is more depleted than they care to admit and they are probably prioritizing what gets shot down.
Shaheds are flying in all directions now, and majority of sorties are offensive. There's just no huge fleet of bored aircraft, tasked exclusively with interception right on Iran's doorstep.
