PIL Doctrine: "Accumulation of events theory" -even if a single attack does not reach the required gravity threshold for an armed attack, several smaller attacks might be taken together in gauging whether that threshold has been met.
US and UK have carried out a number of joint military strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen in response to attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels on both commercial and state vessels in the Red Sea since conflict broke out in Gaza. The US and UK justified their strikes by invoking te right of self-defense enshrined in Art. 51 of the United Nations charter and also found within customary international law. It provides that the right exists "if an armed attack occurs" against a state and that any action taken should be both "necessary" and "proportionate." The US and UK both invoked Houthi attacks on their naval warships to justify self-defense yet the number said attacks were relatively small in relation to the overall number of attacks launched by the Houthi rebels. The reported damges was also relatively small and no deaths have been reported. While the ICJ has held that self defense is reserved for responses to attacks which are of a particular "scale and effects", some scholars and states, including the US, do not believe that such a threshold exists, or should exist. The "accumulation of events theory" is something that has only been given tentative support by the ICJ and is rarely expressly invoked by states. It arguably remains, at present at least, just a theory.
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