As the countdown to the end of US president Barack Obama’s reign starts, many in the Arab region hope that the US administration, having freed itself from any domestic constraints, will be taking a more active policy line, particularly in the Syrian crisis.

To the chagrin of these dreamers, in his final State of the Union address to Congress last month, Obama dashed any hope in this direction.

He said that the main challenges for the US today were to keep the country safe and lead the world — but without becoming its policeman. Although he admitted that the challenges facing the US and the world today are rooted in the increase in “failing states”, and not in the presence of “evil empires,”; Obama insisted that the US should avoid involvement in attempts at rebuilding every state that falls into crisis. The alternative to this direct projection of American power is its “wise application”, defined by Obama as the “smarter approach” of a patient and disciplined strategy that utilises all the elements of American power.

Obama gave a number of examples in this regard to affirm the success of a strategy which many see as a failure. In Syria, the US is “partnering” with local forces (meaning separatist Kurdish forces), and leading an international coalition against Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). In handling Iran, the US formed an international coalition that imposed harsh diplomatic and economic sanctions, ultimately resulting in the nuclear agreement.

It was obvious that Obama was trying to exonerate himself and his administration from any responsibility for the chaos that has swept through the Middle East on his watch, when he stated: “The Middle East is going through a transformation that will play out for a generation, rooted in conflicts that date back millennia.”

This represents an official endorsement of the myth of a Sunni-Shiite conflict as lying at the heart of the matter, disregarding the fact that conflicts so-designated only became fraught and violent after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 established sectarian power-sharing there, and left Iraq under Iran’s influence. If the George W. Bush administration was directly responsible for this situation, his successor is not entirely blameless; the Obama administration remained a passive — or complicit — observer of Iranian involvement in support for the Bashar Al Assad regime against his own people, backed Nouri Al Maliki as Iraqi prime minister in complete disregard of the elections results that favoured Eyad Allawi, and turned a blind eye to Al Maliki’s sectarian policies in Iraq and to Al Houthis in Yemen, leading to heightened sectarian tensions in the region.

Today, the US views Iran as part of the solution in Syria. According to Kerry, “[I]t is not to be missed by anybody here that even Iran put forward an important contribution to the dialogue in a peace plan that called for a unity government, constitutional reform, a ceasefire, and an election” in Syria.

In this way, Kerry has changed his position from support for the creation of a transitional governing body to a national unity government in Syria, and Iran has become part of the solution despite what it has been doing in Syria for the past five years.

It is clear that the Obama administration considers the signing of the nuclear agreement with Iran in Vienna last summer as its prize foreign-policy achievement, and important for Obama’s personal presidential legacy.

Obama referenced this in this speech: “That’s why we built a global coalition, with sanctions and principled diplomacy, to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. And as we speak, Iran has rolled back its nuclear programme, shipped out its uranium stockpile, and the world has avoided another war.”

Indeed, the nuclear deal is undoubtedly a real achievement, having rid the region of the probability of having another nuclear power. Yet, Obama remains oblivious to Iran’s other policies that are destabilising the region, stoking sectarian tensions and attempting to meddle with the security of the Arab Gulf states, as well as that of Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

In all cases, there will not be any major change to US foreign policy during the final year of the Obama administration, either on the level of strategy or in terms of the prevailing vision. However, some priorities in the Middle East have changed. The Obama administration no longer sees the removal of Al Assad as a condition for a transition agreement in Syria. At the same time, the Palestinian issue has all but fallen off the to-do list of a president who from his first day in office declared that the creation of a Palestinian state was at the top of his agenda.

Dr Marwan Kabalan is a Syrian academic and writer.