While Iran's nuclear program, Syria's chemical weapons and the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians remain priorities, President Obama and his team appear to be developing a lower key Middle East agenda.
"We can't just be consumed 24/7 by one region, important as it is," said National Security Adviser Susan Rice in an interview with The New York Times.
Rice, who is heading up a Middle East policy review at Obama's direction, said: "He thought it was a good time to step back and reassess, in a very critical and kind of no-holds-barred way, how we conceive the region."
That could mean less emphasis on Egypt, which remains under military rule, as well as nations like Libya, Tunisia and Yemen.
Reports The New York Times:
"Not only does the new approach have little in common with the 'freedom agenda' of George W. Bush, but it is also a scaling back of the more expansive American role that Mr. Obama himself articulated two years ago, before the Arab Spring mutated into sectarian violence, extremism and brutal repression.
"The blueprint drawn up on those summer weekends at the White House is a model of pragmatism — eschewing the use of force, except to respond to acts of aggression against the United States or its allies, disruption of oil supplies, terrorist networks or weapons of mass destruction.
"Tellingly, it does not designate the spread of democracy as a core interest."