The latest dispatches from the Middle East leave even the most hardened geopolitical nerd with a migraine. With each twist of U.S. President Barack Obama's kaleidoscope, pundits are left scrambling for their handbooks to remind them not who the good and bad guys are, as was in the George W. Bush era, but more what are the new relationships to recognize in the ever increasingly complicated "Matrix Un-simplified."

Obama started it when the U.S. began sharing intelligence with Hezbollah on the Syrian battlefield and working closely with Shiite militias in Iraq - both strategic moves that would have been unthinkable a year ago.

But Syria is getting especially complicated. Can you place the Kurds and who they are allied with among the mix of al-Nusra Front, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) or the Syria regime? Who is fighting who, for that matter?

For Obama though, Syrian President Bashar Assad is the low-class mistress who you just hate yourself for going back to time and time again. While Obama might fantasize about bombing him out of office, he just cannot help himself but to cooperate on a much bigger and more important war against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Hitting the extremists hard will be appreciated by folks in the American Midwest, but removing a Middle Eastern dictator is a harder sell and might have to be handed over to the next president to enter the Oval Office, and few doubt that if it is Hillary Clinton, Assad will be a Middle East priority as the "reboot" button will be hit and we shall return to monochrome geopolitics.

But for Obama, remarkably, the obsession is still there, even if he has lost his mojo. Just recently in Beirut a top U.S. official visited and did the normal grip-and-grin of call-center diplomacy for the local press. And the subject of how Assad was the evil that needed to be removed was driven home once again.

But one has to question how serious the U.S. is about signing any nuclear deal with Iran when it still has wet dreams about the removal of one of its greatest allies, the Syrian president.

Perhaps the Iran deal is just pure theater for the cameras and press room wasters.

The battle in Syria, though, looks as though it is about to shift gear as all the smart money is talking of a spring offensive.

Not only are the Turks working more closely with the Saudis and Qataris about a radical military plan that would involve Turkish boots in the ground, but the U.S. also has plans of its own. The trouble is, we will not know whether Washington's agenda in Syria is really about defeating ISIS or toppling Assad, following an unreported snippet of intelligence that has raised a few eyebrows since early March - how al-Nusra Front is shaping up in Syria.

Perhaps more interesting is who is now backing the al-Qaida group, which appears to be getting more friendly press coverage of late from Washington wordsmiths who probably call themselves journalists.

In March a few intelligence websites noted that one of its "moderate" Sunni opposition fighting groups had been broken up and all its jihadis joined al-Nusra Front.

The CIA backed and armed the Syrian rebel group, the Hazzm Brigade disbanded and left behind a stockpile of U.S.-provided weapons, including anti-tank TOW missiles, which al-Nusra Front has seized. Or at least this is what is believed. In reality the Hazzm Brigades' loyalty was to al-Nusra Front anyway and a number of recent key battles where al-Nusra Front had taken Syrian regime barracks were actually won with the same U.S.-made weapons that were originally supplied to one of about 13 outfits that were on the "dirty dozen" list of so-called moderates, which included the Hazzm Brigades. Put bluntly, the Hazzm Brigade had been supplying al-Nusra Front with U.S. weapons for quite some time now with tacit knowledge, indeed approval, of the U.S.

But there is a dirty game at play here and it is from the U.S.

The Hazzm Brigades, according to some Syria experts, was a perfect vehicle for Washington to deny the unthinkable: That it was backing al-Qaida groups all along.

According to some sources, the U.S. is now planning to rebrand al-Nusra Front, as with no one left to arm against the Syrian regime, the only way forward is a political one and to label al-Nusra Front as "moderates" as it waits for the right moment to ship them more arms via the Qataris who just this week offered themselves to work with Turkey on a soldiers-on-the-ground military plan in Syria.

Intelligence sources are saying that Washington is now ready to back al-Nusra Front in the war against ISIS. Or is that Assad? Hard to believe, but this al-Qaida group has become a "moderate" Muslim one in Obama's eyes whose military chiefs are preparing to both arm and train it - the same group that has tried on many occasions to sign a pact with ISIS and beheaded two Lebanese hostages last year.

Is al-Nusra Front supposed to do the dirty work to overthrow Syria's president or fight ISIS? A U.S. envoy's recent visit to Beirut where he mentioned Assad gives an indication of how deep the obsession still is of Obama to topple the Syrian leader. Perhaps this is being used to humor the Saudis who also dream of an Assad-free Syria. On the question of al-Qaida groups fighting with U.S.-supplied weapons, the subject is actually only loosely veiled and out there for those who want to dig a little.

In fact, former U.S. ambassador Robert Ford recently said on his twitter account to Edward Dark, a journalist in Syria, that the U.S. knew the Syrian rebels - the Hazzm Brigades - they were backing were in bed with al-Qaida. The problem now is that the U.S. State Department has lost its cover to fund and train al-Qaida while maintaining what the U.S. likes to call "plausible deniability."

But was it ever plausible to fund al-Qaida, indirectly or directly, and expect the Iranians to take Obama seriously? The timing could not have been worse given that Assad is Iran's proxy leader and ally. How can Obama eliminate him and expect Iran to keep its end of the bargain of the so-called historic agreement? This question becomes even more farcical when we study the makeup of what is going on in Yemen, with the latest game changer being Iran's call for a diplomatic process, while Saudi Arabia is offering Pakistani soldiers $700 a day to fight.

Officially, Pakistan refused, but the stakes in Yemen are being raised to a fevered pitch as it seems implausible that any Iran deal can go ahead with the current crisis erupting.

But Yemen is just one on the list of many barbs that look set to claw the deal from the jaws of victory.

Iran has listed a number of concerns in recent days about how genuine the U.S. offer is given that a fact sheet that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's people prepared that looked nothing like what was agreed to at the Swiss resort.

One imagines that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is going to shift the goal posts at the last minute as he keeps on tweeting that he can only agree to a deal if all sanctions are lifted, almost as though this is a prerequisite before going ahead. Iran has never been in a stronger position as its critical geopolitical partner - Russia - has just played a masterly stroke in announcing that the arms embargo is over and that Moscow is ready to supply Iran with the coveted S-300 missiles that just recently Russian President Vladimir Putin scoffed were merely a defensive tool for Iran against Israel. But any third-rate arms expert will tell you that once you eliminate one side's potency with a "defense" weapon, you effectively neuter them, and hence weaken them. Tehran knows only too well now that it can play footsy with the U.S. as it has already won a key victory with the S-300s. Rouhani can tell his people that the arms embargo is now over as Russia and Turkey consider that the oil one is also.

Maybe no goal posts need to be shifted for the deal to be scuttled anyway. As I write, reports are coming in of the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Theodor Roosevelt, aka "the Big Stick," which "will join other American ships prepared to intercept any Iranian vessels carrying weapons to the Houthi rebels fighting in Yemen." And so even Obama has run out of tentacles as the plates he is spinning in the air start crashing down. Even if his experts push for a negotiated agreement with Iran that would supposedly restrict the country's development of nuclear weapons, a very real confrontation with Iran could soon be on the horizon.

According to U.S. reports, the Iranian regime has arranged for weapons to be shipped to rebels fighting to gain control of Yemen. The Houthi rebels' hostile actions are strongly opposed by the U.S., which openly sides with the Saudis who are carrying out a bombing campaign that has been targeting the Houthi rebels since late last month.

And all this while al-Qaida in Yemen grows and grows.

But it is not only in Yemen.

As the giants of the region reshuffle on their feet, few have considered what this confusion has brought with it. Just this week we saw the horror of al-Qaida in Libya executing 30 Christians lest we forget what this group is capable of. In Yemen, too, it is little reported that al-Qaida is growing there in worrying numbers. It is little wonder the Saudis are getting jittery about Yemen as their huge country stands as common ground linking ISIS and al-Qaida groups in Iraq and Yemen. And of all the Gulf states, no one knows more al-Qaida and ISIS's capability than the Saudis, as such religious groups emerged in the 1990s from failed states like theirs as a political trade off for political repression, as in Syria, Yemen and Somalia, and not as it is commonly cited being "created" by the U.S. or Israel.