WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will hear plenty about Syria when he steps off Air Force One in the Middle East this week, very likely facing new pressure from worried allies to help rebels oust Syrian President Bashar Assad but carrying no change in U.S. policy that could calm fears of the crisis spreading across borders and destabilizing the region.

Obama, who will visit Israel, the West Bank and Jordan, has resisted using the American military in the effort and isn't planning any change to a U.S. approach that's had little effect in aiding rebels' efforts to dislodge Assad.

Analysts say it's unclear what message Obama can convey as the conflict hits the two-year mark Friday with no end in sight and no good U.S. policy options left.

The trip is about "managing expectations, managing the problems, not necessarily offering solutions to these problems," said Haim Malka, deputy director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research center in Washington.

The Assad regime suffered a new blow Saturday. A high-ranking military officer defected to neighboring Jordan and said in an interview that morale among those still inside the regime had plummeted, the Associated Press reported.

Maj. Gen. Mohammed Ezz al-Din Khalouf said in a video that aired Saturday on the Al-Arabiya channel that many of those in Assad's regime have lost faith in it, yet continue to do their jobs, allowing Assad to continue claiming broad support.

Still, U.S. officials are surprised that Assad has clung to power this long. Their mantra that his "days are numbered" was long ago rendered moot with the death toll in Syria rising to 70,000.

"All this conversation about post-Assad Syria, it seems almost unreal," said Joel Charny, a vice president at InterAction, an umbrella group for international aid agencies operating in Syria and neighboring countries.

As the crisis shows little sign of abating, Israel and Jordan have become increasingly anxious. Israel fears the rise of jihadists, the possibility that Syria's rich cache of weapons might fall into the hands of Hezbollah, and a general Syrian collapse.

Jordan, already squeezed by a poor economy, is facing a mounting humanitarian crisis: More than 400,000 Syrian refugees have fled over the border to Jordan, a country with a population of just 6 million. Some say the number might hit 1 million by the close of the year.

The White House fears that sending weapons to the rebels might further destabilize the region. Critics say the U.S. approach has been marked by miscalculations and waffling that's exacerbated the conflict and led to an anti-American backlash from the opposition the U.S. professed to support.

For Jordan, the worries go beyond the refugee camps on its borders. As the Syrian regime deteriorates, and Islamists in Syria grow emboldened, the Islamic opposition in Jordan might become similarly emboldened and push for further reforms, said Marwan Muasher, an ex-foreign minister of Jordan who's a vice president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Muasher said he "understands perfectly the administration's reluctance to do much on Syria," noting that there's no domestic pressure in the United States for intervening. He warned, though, that the fear of not wanting to arm individuals who might become terrorists could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"The more you wait, the more you radicalize the opposition, the more you disintegrate the country and the more you destabilize the neighbors like Jordan and Lebanon," he said.

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