“We are not seeking a grand bargain; nothing will be different the day after this agreement if we were to reach one with respect to all the other issues that challenge us in this region, except that we will have taken steps to guarantee that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” Kerry said.

But experts who have noticed the trend say that’s exactly the problem. The administration has so much wrapped into the talks that it is at best not addressing other problems in the region caused by Iran, and is at worst seeking a broader accommodation.

David Rothkopf, the top editor of Foreign Policy magazine, suggested in January that Iran could be the greatest beneficiary of Obama’s foreign policy by the time he leaves office.

Michael Doran, a former National Security Council official in the George W. Bush administration, said in a widely circulated essay in Mosaic magazine published Feb. 2 that rapprochement with Iran was Obama’s “secret” strategy.

“A broader deal with Iran is what matters,” Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who has written extensively on Iran’s role in the Middle East, told the Washington Examiner.