As the Geneva II talks on Syria staggered to an uneventful close, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper this week presented a stark assessment of the terrorist threat in the Middle East in his annual “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community” before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

“Political uncertainty and violence will probably increase in the region in 2014,” Clapper’s statement read, adding that the war in Syria has “created opportunities for extremist groups to find ungoverned spaces from where they can try to destabilize new governments and prepare attacks against Western interests.”

In other words, the terrorist threat to the region is going from bad to worse, thanks in large part to the war in Syria. Intelligence and terrorism expert Bruce Riedel writes for Al-Monitor that Israel is increasingly surrounded by al-Qaeda and its affiliates, and that “the growth of al-Qaeda franchises and al-Qaedism in the neighborhood is the result of the Arab Awakening and the chaos it has produced, not some al-Qaeda master plan.”

So much for the promise of the once-hyped Arab Spring, the failed assumptions of which still seem to affect US-Syria policy.