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.

Obama, who deep down did not want this attack, has to thank Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin. They gave him a respectable way out, without insulting or humiliating him, and in a way that allows him to present a diplomatic success to the world — though dubious, and likely temporary — without pulling the trigger. Why dubious and temporary? Because while Syria is willing to place its chemical weapons under international oversight, we have not heard that it agreed to get rid of them. Long live the fine distinction.

From the moment that Obama granted Congress the benefit of the last word, he exposed himself to this brilliant gambit from the workshop of Moscow and Damascus. Putin and Assad realized that members of Congress are split over the necessity of the attack and decided to confuse them even more with an enticing initiative. Imagine a member of Congress who has to decide on a position regarding the military operation, while a proposal to subjugate Syrian gas to international oversight is on the table. How could Obama support an attack, when White House threats had seemingly already achieved a diplomatic success? He had no choice but to delay the debate over the attack on Syria — because if he had not, he was likely to have been made a mockery of with a contrarian legislative vote.