Tehran and Hizballah back Assad against Moscow’s Syria peace plan

DEBKAfile’s Moscow sources report that the Russian plan to bring the Syrian regime and opposition together was totally rejected by Iran and its Lebanese surrogate Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah., because it required a commitment from Bashar Assad to step down at a future date. Nasrallah informed  Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov in a five-hour meeting in Beirut that the survival of the Assad presidency is non-negoitable.