How will US election affect Middle East policy?
No matter who wins Tuesday's presidential election, one thing is clear: The United States will continue to meddle in the conflicts of the Middle East, analysts say.
Barack Obama, who shied away from large-scale military intervention in favour of more covert drone warfare, will end his eight years of presidency with a deeply controversial legacy, and at a time when the region faces myriad competing crises. Conflicts are raging in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya; major attacks have been staged in Tunisia, Turkey and Lebanon; and an uprising has been simmering among residents of the occupied West Bank, while Palestinians in Gaza have barely begun to recover from Israel's 2014 bombing campaign.
"Obama's legacy ... is one of near-total failure," Stephen Walt, an international affairs professor at Harvard's Kennedy School, told Al Jazeera.
"A two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians is further away than ever. Intervention in Libya and Yemen produced a failed state. Insisting that 'Assad must go' and backing other forms of intervention made the Syrian civil war worse," he said, noting that the only success story to emerge from Obama's two presidential terms was last year's historic Iran nuclear deal, which curbed Tehran's nuclear programme in return for a lifting of sanctions.