Like every year on Sept. 11, the president of Syria celebrated his birthday. The best analysts in Israel and abroad prophesized that he would be hung on the highest tree by his birthday in 2013, but Bashar al-Assad marked 48 years in the company of his loved ones. This birthday was especially happy for him. At dawn in Damascus, he received word that US President Barack Obama delayed the debate in Congress over a military attack on Syria. The young Bashar, we can guess, leaped from his bed full of adrenaline. One does not get a gift like this from Uncle Sam every day.
Fourteen hundred Syrians dead, three nerve-racking weeks, two world powers and not a single shot fired. Aside from the Syrian rebels, who once again found themselves beggars left empty-handed, all the countries involved in this story should be pleased: not only Syria, which deferred and perhaps dissolved the threat of attack, but also its patron Russia, its neighbor Israel and its enemy the United States. A sigh of relief was also heard from Lebanon, which feared the spillover of a military conflict to its territory, from Jordan, which feared a large wave of refugees, and from Turkey, which was liable to receive Syrian fire in revenge.
