> Israel just launched a perfidious pre-emptive defence by assassinating a lot of their top military leadership.

And Iran retaliated and actually some of it's missiles inflicted damage. We can only imagine what the damage would be if Isreal patiently waited for the Iran to feel read to attack Israel which it's always advertised as its goal. Also it already happened once. Nations of the region decided they are strong enough to attack Isreal and they did. It was bound to happen again and as the death toll in Isreal in the current conflict shows, despite pre-emptive strike damaging Iran's missile potential significantly, there's only so much you can do with defensive weapons.

In this specific context pre-emptive strike on leaders and long range attack capabilities is not perfidious, it's just about the only thing you can do that's not stupid.