U.S. President Barack Obama said in an interview published on Thursday he had underestimated the difficulty of resolving the Middle East conflict and had set his expectations too high in his first year.

“The Middle East peace process has not moved forward. And I think it’s fair to say for all our efforts at early engagement, is not where I want it to be,” Obama told Time Magazine.

“This is just really hard … This is as intractable a problem as you get,” the president said. Reuters