So, which of the two efforts is really "tilting at windmills?"
It should be obvious by now that there are some regimes where diplomacy alone isn't going to do the job. While we're being jerked around by North Korea, Iran is jerking the U.N. around. Why not? What the hell is the U.N. going to do about it? Genocide in Sudan, and they can't even work up a set of sanctions, much less anything that would impress a tyrannical regime.