I think the word you're looking for is shock and ore Joe. What just happened here is: Iran demonstrated that it's capable of hitting US assets with deadly accuracy, defeat it's air defense systems and electronic warfare counter measures with relative ease.
What that means is: Any ship protected with Aegis or Airfield ptotected with patriot system is highly vulnerable to Iranian missiles. Basically Iran demonstrated that can lob one through the window and joimed a club of very few militaries with such capability. Hence the backdown from Trump and Pentagon. And Iran would be crazy to want to get into full on war, hence their backdown.
If patriot defenses shot down those missiles and few that got through got their targeting messed up by electronic warfare counter measures, falling randomly around the base: There would be F22 airstrikes and cruise missiles pounding Iran right now. Iran just deleted it self of the 'spank with airstrikes if naughty' menu. That's a huge development on middle east military planning board. Equivalent to Russians landing into Syria.
