Russia and Iran jointly oppose "external attempts" to bring regime change in Syria, a Kremlin official said Monday in Tehran after President Vladimir Putin met supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The comments were a direct rebuff of repeated demands from the United States, France, Britain and Saudi Arabia that President Bashar al-Assad step down and play no future role in war-torn Syria. On his first trip to Iran in eight years, Putin, accompanied by his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, went straight into a meeting with Khamenei, the Islamic republic's ultimate authority. Describing the 90-minute encounter as "quite constructive" and longer than planned, a Kremlin...
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