For all those wondering about the Trump doctrine for the Middle East, Mike Pompeo has usefully provided a clue. It came last week in the form of an important foreign policy speech replete with contradictions and sometimes verging on absurdity. If there was any meaningful policy thread it was that US president Donald Trump stands against whatever Barack Obama stood for. The Trump doctrine for the Middle East is, very simply, being anti-Obama.

The secretary of state followed US tradition when he chose to speak at the American University of Cairo. That city was the venue for the 2009 Obama address in which the then president sought to turn a page on damage done to America’s image by the response to the September 11 attacks. In much of the Muslim world the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq had been viewed as a war against Islam. It was time to mend the rift.

A passionate orator, Mr Obama promised a “new beginning” based on mutual interest and respect. Applauded then and widely praised for a while after, he then disappointed the region by failing to act on the chemical weapons red line he had drawn for the Syrian regime. When Bashar al-Assad, fighting a popular revolution that erupted in 2011, gassed his own citizens, Mr Obama flinched.