AP Photo

When Barack Obama was elected president of the United States, many in the Middle East expected a dramatic change in Washington’s policy towards the region. It is now clear that those expectations were too high.

Mr Obama, as a powerful and eloquent orator, vowed to revamp America’s relationship with the Arab and Muslim worlds after the disastrous presidency of George W Bush. But Mr Obama as president has proven to be a hard-headed political realist who is reluctant to disrupt US alliances with the region’s many authoritarian rulers.