Barack Obama is grappling with an escalating crisis in US-Israeli relations and increased bloodshed in Syria.Barack Obama is grappling with an escalating crisis in US-Israeli relations and increased bloodshed in Syria.

An eruption of violent unrest across the Middle East is confronting President Barack Obama with the most serious challenge yet to his efforts to keep the Arab Spring from morphing into a new wave of anti-Americanism – and he has few options to prevent it.

Washington faces an apparent rise in Islamic activism and declining influence over countries it once counted as allies

Less than two months before the US presidential election, a spate of attacks on embassies in Libya, Egypt and Yemen poses a huge dilemma for a US leader who took office promising a “new beginning” with the Muslim world but has struggled to manage the transformation that has swept away many of the region’s long-ruling dictators.

On top of that, even as he tries to fend off foreign policy criticism from Republican rival Mitt Romney, Obama is grappling with an escalating crisis in US-Israeli relations over Iran’s nuclear programme and increased bloodshed in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad has defied international calls to step aside.

Obama’s Middle East woes deepened last week with a series of mob attacks on US diplomatic compounds and the killing of America’s ambassador to Libya.

Demonstrators were incensed by a US-made film they consider blasphemous to Islam.

All of this may simply point to a larger challenge that will endure well beyond November’s US vote – an apparently growing gulf between the US and increasingly assertive Islamist forces within the Middle East.

The irony is clear.

With his vaunted 2009 speech in Cairo, Obama had hoped to ‘reset’ relations with the region and ease some of the ill feeling stoked by the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and war on terror rhetoric of Obama’s Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.

The Obama administration was caught flat-footed by a wave of pro-democracy revolts last year that toppled autocratic leaders – some, like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, a long-time US ally.

But Washington gradually gave cautious backing to the goals of the Arab Spring movement.

Now, with much of the US optimism that accompanied the Arab world’s uprisings seemingly gone for good, Washington faces an apparent rise in Islamic activism and declining influence over countries it once counted as allies.

“There are a lot of moving parts and it’s important not to make too many generalisations,” said Hayat Alvi, lecturer in Middle Eastern studies at the US Naval War College.

Within the region, Obama himself remains much more popular than many predecessors. But scenes of US embassy property being trashed first in Cairo and then Yemen in anger at the film insulting the Prophet Muhammad were potent reminders that potentially violent anti-Americanism remains very much alive.

The most serious attack killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three of his colleagues in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi – a city saved only last year from the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s forces by Western air power during Libya’s civil war.

While Libya’s government was swift to condemn the attack there and pledged to work with the US to find those responsible, it was the equivocal initial response from Egypt’s new President, Mohammad Mursi – condemning the video but not the Egyptian mob – that infuriated Washington.

Obama pointedly told the Spanish-language network Telemundo that Egypt’s Islamist-led government should not be considered a US ally, “but we don’t consider them an enemy,” he added.

Obama later spoke to Mursi and delivered a blunt message that Egypt must cooperate in protecting American diplomatic facilities.

The White House will be watching closely to see that Mursi follows through. At stake may be the fate of $2 billion a year in foreign aid, much of it for the military, that the US gives Egypt, a source close to the US administration said.

“The Egyptian authorities can’t play any sort of a double game here,” said Ari Ratner, a former Obama administration appointee, Middle East expert and now fellow at the Truman National Security Project. “If the government of Egypt still expects to get significant American aid and investment, (it needs) to be very clear on the un­acceptability of these events and actively work to calm the situation.”

Mursi, however, may feel he has little choice. Like the government of Pakistan, he must walk an awkward path between the superpower whose support he needs, and extremists – or even simply regular voters – in his country with strong religious or nationalist views.

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