Russia's newest surprise from its bag of tricks in Syria has come from deep in the water: It's the Rostov-on-Don submarine that, according to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, has begun to cruise the eastern Mediterranean Sea along the coasts of Syria, Lebanon and Israel. The submarine is almost undetectable, armed with a large number of cruise missiles and regarded as a sophisticated, almost invisible intelligence-gathering vehicle. The Rostov-on-Don has already fired cruise missiles toward Islamic State targets in Syria, but it is the submarine's other capabilities that are causing far greater concern to other players in the region, such as Israel.
It is still unclear what the ratcheting up of the combined efforts of Russia and Iran will achieve on the Syrian battlefield. A Dec. 10 Bloomberg News article stated that the Iranians have begun withdrawing their forces from Syria after heavy losses there, including the wounding of Gen. Qasem Soleimani. The source of the news tidbit was, evidently, American intelligence that discovered convoys of Iranian fighters returning to the land of the ayatollahs, their tails between their legs.
