It is a mistake to look for principled consistency in America’s interventions in the Middle East. the Obama administration has established a clear set of priorities which are based solely on a realistic assessment of what matters to America’s own interests.

Some of the contradictions were summed up by Gregory Gause of the Brookings Centre in his paper ‘Beyond Sectarianism’ when he said: “The US is trying to limit Iranian influence in Syria but negotiating with Iran on nuclear weapons. It is backing the Iranian-allied government in Iraq against a Sunni insurgency in which Islamists play a large role, but opposing the Iranian-allied government in Syria and supporting a Sunni insurgency in which Islamists play a large role. It calls for the downfall of the Bashar Al Assad regime in Syria but backs away from the use of force against it, and then it becomes indirectly a partner of the regime in is an agreement to rid Syria of chemical weapons.”

Nonetheless, from a geopolitical overview the US does have a few defining fixed points. Washington places great value on an exceptionally awkward triangle of mutually distant countries: it values its relationships with Israel and Saudi Arabia, but is also absolutely determined to make a nuclear deal with the Iranians, which President Barack Obama sees as an important legacy achievement.

Washington does not care much who rules in Egypt, Syria or Libya, but given the gathering chaos of sectarian and non-state violence, the Americans will back anyone who can deliver stability within a nation state. This is why they have remained distant from the troubled Libyan government as it has failed to cope with the collapse of the state, and why they supported Al Sissi’s regime in Egypt, which is firmly in charge of the country, and why they backed off from their earlier support for Syrian rebels as there was no quick win.

Dominant priority

But in addition to bolstering stability, and maintaining good relations with its three premier strategic partners (Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran over the talks) the US has made resisting violent and radical Islamism another dominant priority, a hangover from the Bush administration that has been adopted wholesale by Obama.

This is why Obama sent US forces into Iraq this week, despite refusing to commit them in Syria in 2013 when the Arab world expected Obama to honour his red line against the use of chemical weapons. The difference is that in Syria US forces would have been fighting on the side of a mixed array of rebels including the radical Jabhat Al Nusra and others closely allied to Al Qaida, which he deemed unacceptable.

In Iraq, the US will be working with the government so Obama has started what he has called humanitarian missions even if that conjures up memories of the Libyan intervention under UN Resolution 2016 which allowed states to undertake “all necessary measures to protect civilians” but ended in full blown regime change and the death of Muammar Gaddafi. This mission creep has been much encouraged by Obama telling the New York Times that in addition to its humanitarian missions, the US may eventually do more to help Iraq repel the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (Isil), which seeks to build its own state, making it explicit when Obama said “we are not going to let them create some caliphate through Syria and Iraq”.

The US has been happy to back Haider Al Abadi as Iraq’s new prime minister and on Tuesday warned the Iraqi army not to get involved in the democratic process. It will be an interesting test of the generals’ loyalties as they weigh up the benefits they may have received during Nouri Al Maliki’s two terms of office against the advice of the Americans alongside whom they are now again fighting Islamists.

The reason the Americans have been happy to get so involved in Iraq while avoiding Syria is that they are trying to work with what might become a normal government again with a recognised command structure to its troops, whereas in Syria they were running around trying to find assorted guerilla commanders who paid little attention to the politicians in the Syrian National Coalition.

And in Iraq they are fighting Isil and its deeply abhorrent ideology, rather than finding themselves in alliance with Isil’s fellow travellers if they had sent troops in Syria. The American and Iraqi armed forces have fought together for some years and they are at ease working together. In 2006 and 2007, the Iraqis and Americans combined with the Sunni militias of Al Anbar province to defeat Al Qaida. These are the same militias that are currently allied with Isil, so it is an easy stretch of the imagination to foresee the new Al Abadi government take office and become more inclusive in its rhetoric, which will allow the American and Iraqi generals to pick up their mobiles and call the militia leaders and former Baathists with whom they have worked for years and ask them to desert Isil with their 100,000 troops, leaving the estimated 10,000 Isil fighters stranded.

It may be wishful thinking, but Isil and its current allies are not one monolithic organisation. And what alliances have been made, can be broken.