PS: I don't agree with still siding with Saudi Arabia. We've had two golden opportunities to "unfriend" them. Both GWB and Trump lacked the courage and principles to do it. JMHO
We did plenty of negotiating and table-sitting with Iran during Obama’s presidency and all it did was make Bill and Hillary Clinton rich, the mullahs richer,... and who knows what Kerry got out of it. We did get a little Iranian heavy water out of it that we needed because our ability to produce it was shut down in 1996 ...and we turned over 20% of our uranium capacity to Russia which is less important than what that deal did to Kazakhstan, the world’s largest uranium producer - it gave Russia control over Kazakhstan’s mines even as Russia was absorbing Crimea and threatening Sweden and Estonia.
Iran continued ballistic missile development as if nothing had changed, and the US buried Iran’s involvement in terrorist acts so that the families of those slain would not be able to sue for damages. The Iranians saw how desperate the last two administrations were that they took full advantage of them in negotiations, getting several high value prisoners with American blood on their hands back for a traitor.
The only thing that was effective against both Iran and North Korea was not diplomacy, it was sabotage, like stuxnet in Iran and whatever ultimately caused the Norks to screw their program up[and that may have been self-inflicted]. When you get down to it diplomacy is nothing more than the art of saying “nice doggie” until you can get a stick to use as a deterrent.
But to even use diplomacy effectively in place of direct action you cannot have a “nice guy” as your team leader in negotiations. You have to have someone the other side believes is willing to walk away from a bad deal...someone they know they will have to work hard to woo, not someone like John Kerry desperate to get any deal. And to get the
best
final deal you will have to have your team leader amp up the rhetoric and walk away from a number of lesser deals to establish that he won’t be rolled.