This is the air force model of Theater Security Cooperation. Just as the Navy does port calls (nothing builds US influence and rapport like letting loose a few thousand drunken sailors on some port community), the AF does foreign military sales. I don't see it helping much in the near term, but the long-term investment of such complex systems does lead to a stability of who the the government is going to work with. The question is, will we be able to swallow our pride and work with them if they are more closely aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood than with the current regime? I hope so.

We had a similar deal in place with Iran, and when the Iranians ran us off I suspect we did not work too hard to leverage the need to maintain their "made in the USA" equipment as a rationale to establish and maintain relations with the new government. We should have. It would have saved a lot of the silliness between the west and Iran that has gone down since. But with both Israel and Saudi Arabia seeing Iran as enemy #1, there is a lot of pressure on the US to hold them in that light as well. That is too bad, as Iran is arguably the most pro-US Muslim populace and is a true nation that will endure into the foreseeable future.