Barack Obama, the Arab spring and a series of unforeseen events On 4 June 2009 Barack Obama bounded on to the stage at Cairo University to deliver a speech which promised to seek "a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world." It was, he said solemnly, a time of great tension. Speaking from a lectern set against a backdrop of plush red curtains, Obama sought to move beyond the toxic legacy of the 9/11 attacks, the US-led invasion of Iraq, the "war on terror" and the long and occasionally bloody impasse on the Palestinian issue. Expectations were enormous. Even at the time it was hard to imagine that this young African-American president with Muslim roots could meet them all. Still, Obama had opposed George Bush on Iraq and chided him for not doing enough to promote a just peace for the Palestinians - the two defining Middle Eastern issues of the preceding, turbulent years. The 55-minute speech was widely praised for its eloquence and ambition, but the reviews were mixed. For one commentator, the key was to get beyond the courtesies - mujamalat in Arabic - to the beef. Honeyed words were welcome, went a typical response. But would actions follow? Was Obama really any more than "a Bush in sheep's clothing"? Now, as the end of his term nears, the answer is clear: Obama was different from his predecessor. Yet his record is as varied as the responses to the Cairo address. An extraordinary chain of unforeseen events - a hazard for any leader - has created new circumstances and new dilemmas. On Palestine, always a touchstone for Arabs and Muslims, Obama has been a grave disappointment. Having strikingly called the situation of the Palestinians "intolerable," he blinked first in the confrontation with Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, over whether settlements in the occupied territories would have to stop before peace talks could resume. US domestic politics interceded. Hopes of a two-state solution to the world's most intractable conflict are now fading fast. From the start, Obama reached out to Iran with a friendly message to its people and hints at flexibility in negotiations with its government. But his efforts to engage have failed, leading only to tougher sanctions and a covert war. Unless long-running diplomacy starts to work, a potentially catastrophic confrontation over its nuclear programme still looms. US troops have now left Iraq, but the country is racked by sectarianism and is not a reliable friend, its post-Saddam leaders in thrall to Tehran. On another post-9/11 front, US forces are beginning to wind down the war in Afghanistan. Obama has, though, escalated drone strikes against al-Qaida from Pakistan to Yemen. The killing of Osama bin Laden in his Abbotabad hideout was a national security triumph. Yet the dangers of jihadi violence, spreading to areas such as Somalia and the Maghreb, live on. The Guantánamo Bay detention centre, which Obama pledged to close, remains open - a stain on his record. In Cairo, Obama touched on the broad issue of political change in a sclerotic Arab world whose rulers sold themselves as guarantors of stability and western interests. That required an especially delicate balance. Watching as he spoke was Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, a US ally for whom democracy was a dirty word. And Obama had spent the previous night at the desert ranch of the octogenarian King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the indispensable guardian of cheap western oil supplies. America, the president said, with a humble nod to these ageing Arab autocrats - and in a lightly coded reference to Bush's controversial "freedom agenda" - did "not presume to know what is best for everyone." But there was a bigger nod: "I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose." Eighteen months later, the uprisings of the Arab spring tested that awkward construct. From the short and mostly peaceful revolution in Tunisia to carnage in Syria, Obama's responses have, as one admirer put it, mixed "pragmatism and values." Egypt's revolution provided the first hurdle. Obama was criticised for backing stability as the drama of Tahrir Square unfolded. But on 1 February came his call for Mubarak to step down "now." As the New York Times wrote: "Obama upended three decades of American relations with its most stalwart ally in the Arab world, putting the weight of the United States squarely on the side of the Arab street." So when Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who succeeded Mubarak to become Egypt's first democratically elected president, visited Washington last month - after demonstrations in Cairo and far beyond over a crude Islamophobic film - the tension was as obvious as the change was palpable. The US hope is that engagement, combined with the responsibility of exercising power, will encourage Islamist-led governments toward pragmatism. Libya's revolution illustrated Obama's ambivalent attitude to force and his reluctance to get involved in another war in a Muslim country. Washington "led from behind," providing air power and intelligence but leaving it to Nato's European powers and their Arab allies to help overthrow Muammar Gaddafi. The brutal aftermath - in which jihadis killed the US ambassador in Benghazi - painfully underlined the dangers. Syria, the bloodiest front of the Arab spring, has been the biggest challenge. Obama demanded Bashar al-Assad's departure but resisted pressures to arm the opposition or impose a no-fly zone. Now anxiety is growing about the rise of jihadi-type groups and the "blowback" on the Gulf and the wider region. Obama has defended his record of supporting democratisation despite chaos and crises. "It was absolutely the right thing for us to do to align ourselves with democracy, universal rights, a notion that people have to be able to participate in their own governance," he said on 60 Minutes in September. Critics say that in trying to balance US national security with the promotion of democratic values and human rights, Obama has ducked hard choices. Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution characterises this stance as "aggressive hedging," which has alienated both regimes and their opponents. "Autocrats, particularly in the Gulf, think Obama naively supports Arab revolutionaries, while Arab protesters and revolutionaries seem to think the opposite," Hamid said. In Bahrain, on the sectarian divide between the Sunni and Shia worlds, home to the US fifth fleet and a key link in western defences against Iran, strategy and a Saudi veto trumped universal rights. Israel's close links with the US and worries about Iran have acted as a brake: a new tolerance of Islamists does not extend to the armed "resistance" movements - Lebanon's Hezbollah or Hamas in Palestine. "Obama has successfully moved the US out of the ditch that George W Bush left the country in," Fawaz Gerges argued in a recent book. But the test ... will be whether or not he can realign US foreign policy with progressive and democratic voices in the region and translate his words into concrete policies. So to look back now to the uplifting rhetoric of June 2009 is to reflect on the gap between ambition and reality. Considering the choice between Obama and Romney, Arab political blog Awsaat offered only the weakest of support for the president who aroused such hopes when he spoke of that "new beginning" between America and Muslims. "Although many of us are feeling disappointed with Obama's first term," it said, "unfortunately we can choose between the bad we know or the worse we don't know."