E.g., in the example scenario of the diff in json objects, if a possible operation is a change in a property value (such as the "id" field), then the diff correctly deduced the smallest change possible is indeed a change in the field.

However, if you can define the set of operation to only be a change in an entire object (and no changing of id field), then surely, you can create a diff that produces the desired object structure change. It would be a custom diff algorithm of course...but it'd be quite a useful one tbh.