A BELEAGUERED Obama and an upbeat Assad.

Two presidents, one American the other Syrian, who have had very contrasting political fortunes these last few weeks.

Even before US President Barack Obama put his plans to strike the Syrian regime on hold, he was facing an uphill task convincing his fellow Americans and others around the world that military intervention was the way to go.

Oh how Mr Obama must be ruing the day he made that remark about Syria crossing a "red line" should it opt to use chemical weapons in Syria's conflict.

President Bashar al-Assad however must have felt a certain welcome respite as he - with a little help from his long-term ally Russia - knocked the diplomatic ball well and truly back into Washington's court. Yesterday the Syrian leader confirmed that his country's chemical weapons would be put under international control.

This concerted effort by Damascus and Moscow was given even further impetus yesterday, when the American people found themselves being addressed not by their own leader, but by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the form of an opinion piece in the New York Times.

Mr Putin's arguments might have been familiar ones - such as claims that a US strike would widen the conflict - but they effectively added to the pressure on Mr Obama who already looked wrong-footed and dithering.

While the issue appears to have morphed into a US - Russian confrontation, it is Mr al-Assad's astute media and public relations offensive of late that really merits some scrutiny.

Unlike his late father and former president Hafez al-Assad, today's Syrian leader could never be described as man with presence. That said, Bashar al-Assad nevertheless gave a reasonable account of himself in a US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) interview last Monday night.

Getting himself beamed into American living rooms in an exclusive interview was something of a propaganda coup for Mr Assad, and chimed with the tone of the Damascus regime's current media campaign that has intensified and become more sophisticated in the last few days.

In the PBS interview Mr al-Assad fuelled the widespread scepticism shared by many people that the United States had not presented "a single shred of evidence" to prove that the Syrian military had used chemical weapons.

Over the last few days this thorny question of chemical weapons use and accountability has been thoroughly raked over. There is however another contentious issue that Mr al-Assad's media campaign has focused on in trying to shape the debate in the wider world about Syria's conflict.

I'm talking about the regime's presentation of the plight facing Syria's Christian community that comprises about 10% of the country's population.

Surely it is no coincidence that a television news report from the BBC's Jeremy Bowen on Wednesday night - terrific as it was - came from the Syrian town of Maaloula.

Home to the few remaining people who actually speak the ancient language of Aramaic, the same language said to have been spoken by Christ, this ancient Christian city now lies at the heart of Syria's propaganda war.

"We gave you Saint Paul, you gave us terrorists," insisted one local Syrian government supporter interviewed by Mr Bowen.

The terrorists the man was referring to, of course, were rebel fighters of the jihadist al-Nusra Front, currently engaged in trying to wrest control of the city from Syrian forces.

That the BBC team was given access to Maaloula's frontlines - something that would have been near impossible without the co-operation of the Syrian regime - is a measure of how much Damascus knows such images and comments will play out to their advantage across the world.

Not for a moment is there any doubt that those of Syria's Christian minority caught up in the civil war are in a particularly vulnerable position.

Indeed recent events in Maaloula have revealed just how prone Christians are to being exploited as well as persecuted.

One report about the battle for the city in the German weekly Der Spiegel, highlighted how shortly after Islamist rebels marched in, the Syrian state broadcaster reported that they desecrated the churches and destroyed shrines.

No sooner though had this been broadcast, than a senior nun at the Thekla Convent in Maaloula contradicted the reports and said the rebels had not damaged the shrines. One Christian resident was even quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying: "We must remain fair. They do not seem to have looted churches or houses."

Almost since the start of the civil war in Syria one of the most common ways for pro-Assad propaganda to find its way into reputable mainstream newspapers and broadcast networks is through Christian news outlets.

Syrian Christians' concerns, like those of other Arab Christians afraid of how Islamist takeovers will impact on them, are more than justified. But as one blogger in the influential current affairs magazine Foreign Policy pointed out, some outlets that cover the plight of Syria's Christians "regularly trade fact for fiction".

All wars have propaganda and Syria's is no different. Loyalists of the Syrian regime and its allies are inclined to dramatise stories of rebel crimes in much the same way as rebel fighters do of regime atrocities. Washington will say it has incontrovertible proof that Syrian forces deployed chemical weapons while Damascus will deny such things.

Lost in all of this are the real and unquestionable horrors being perpetrated against Syrian civilians of all sides.

Events of the last week have thrown up a series of international diplomatic victories and defeats. For the moment Mr Obama may be smarting, Mr al-Assad perhaps gloating. For Syria's innocent civilians caught up in this conflict however - be they Alawites, Sunnis, Christians, Druze, Kurds, Turks or others - they are all losers for now.