It is far from clear, but you can probably put all the elements you mention into the mix by some degree or other.
Ultimately, many of these rebel/militant groups are not amateurs and know what they are doing. Many do seem to have plenty of supplies from abroad and of course many of the attacks are into territory that the rebels have been holding for some years and so have had time to fortify and criss cross with underground bunkers and tunnels.
It could well be that what we are seeing are essential probing attacks to establish the true level of resistance and enemy infrastructure to ensure that the right forces are sent to the right place when the real big push begins.
Good points.
On further review, I am starting to seriously reconsider the ultimate scope and aims of the Russian involvement.
Far from a liberation mission as before, I now think their main goal is a holding action. They intend to ensure Assad is not toppled, and will priorities terrorist groups more threatening to Russian, Chinese and Iranian interests, but will not seek to retake all territory lost to ISIS.
I think the Russian air and naval assets deployed, while impressive and substantial, are nowhere near the forces required for a national level offensive.
You are going to need hundreds each of fixed and rotor wing frontline combat aircraft, with appropriate support assets like tankers, AWACS, UAVs etc.
The commitment of foreign ground forces also need to be considerable, we are talking about hundreds to thousands of tanks and armour vehicles and an ideal minimum of a hundred thousand combat troops. Ideally you will want a lot more of everything.
Unless the Russians substantially beef up their presence and Iranian forces start showing up in significant numbers, I don't think they will be able to do a full on liberation effort. And until that happens, I don't think they will even seriously try to retake the country.
The main problem, I suspect, is logistics.
Neither Russia or Iran has a direct land boarder to Syria, and there are no reliable friendly countries they could route supplies and troops through.
Iraq will be vetoed by America, Turkey is a non starter. Even trying to supply via the sea, you are bottlenecked on pretty much all routes in. It will be even worse for China to try and get troops and supplies there.
I think this will be an especially grave concern for the Iranians, who will be concerned about American organised regime change going on back home while a significant part of their best fighting strength is effectively trapped in Syria unable to help.
If Iran deployed a hundred thousand or more of its best troops to Syria, I think that will give the chickenhawks in Washington ideas or at least severely temp them.
For the Russians and the Chinese, the concerns will be more about the practicalities of how to run a large scale military campaign so far from home, with deeply hostile regional powers controlling much of the ways in and out of Syria.
Russia, and probably China as well, could deploy a good sized force to Syria, but cannot support enough forces there to make a nation wide liberation campaign work, so they are not even going to try.
Thus I think the main goals of the Russian mission are to safeguard Assad and kill terrorists who post the greatest threat to Russian and Chinese interests.
The Syrian ground forces will do what they can to best take advantage of the Russia air support and make as much gains on the ground as they can, but it will be slow work, and may well end up being largely ineffective.
The Russians are there to preserve the status quo first and foremost, if they can help the Syrians retake their country, great, if they cannot, its not the end of the world.
