US hawk John Bolton ponders whether to go for big prey in 2016

He's back. Still courting controversy. Still loving regime change.

With the American presidential election season looming, John Bolton, best remembered around the world as the Bush administration's UN ambassador who openly despised the UN, is considering joining the already crowded field of Republican candidates.

And, while he mulls over a run, he wants to toughen up the debate among his peers. So he is arguing that the only way to deal with Iran is to bomb its nuclear facilities and, since that won't be enough, to take up regime change as a policy.

You might think it sounds passe, since regime change is a stain on American foreign policy that is best forgotten. It sounds particularly jarring when advocated by a proponent of the disastrous 2003 Iraq war and of the threat of weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

But not for the combative Mr Bolton, who sees himself as fighting both to arrest the Obama White House's presumed lack of interest in national security and to save America from its supposed perilous decline.

I met up with Mr Bolton in Washington, having read his New York Times article denouncing the tentative deal with Iran and calling for the bombing/regime change option.

His take is that having conceded Iran can enrich uranium, however limited the quantities, there is no way to stop Tehran from acquiring a bomb in the future, or provoking a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

While there is much to disagree with in this argument, at least he had said aloud what other hawks (and Republican presidential hopefuls) will not admit: that the alternative to a negotiated compromise with Iran is not more sanctions, it is war.

But what about the lessons of recent history, I ask, and the virtues of compromise to avert another Middle East conflict? Iran is different from Iraq, he says, where the only mistake was the timing: Saddam Hussein should have been toppled back in 1991, after the first Gulf war, and not in 2003. In any case, the overthrow was achieved in "a fantastically successful way", he claims, and the mistakes were made after that.

The one thing he's right about is that Iran is different from Iraq - far more powerful and with a real, rather than imagined, nuclear programme. It is also more likely to retaliate to strikes on its nuclear facilities and, after that, to accelerate the quest for the bomb.

To prevent that, Mr Bolton says the US should work with Iran's opposition to topple the Islamic regime. I mention that having travelled to Iran many times I've never met a credible opposition leader who wants to work with the US on overthrowing the regime. "It's not easy, it's not like turning on a light switch," he says. "The US should have been pursuing a regime change policy for decades."

Well, it's clearly too late now. But Mr Bolton is not one to be dissuaded by impossible tasks. He won't be drawn on his favourite Republican candidate for 2016 since he's still deciding whether to throw his own hat in the ring. He has political organisation already: his Foundation for American Security and Freedom, and fundraising co-ordination through a John Bolton political action committee, as well as a John Bolton SuperPac, which backed some Republicans in the 2013 Congressional race. Unsurprisingly, they included Tom Cotton in Arkansas, the driving force behind the open letter that Republicans sent to Iran's leadership in a bid to derail nuclear negotiations.

The foundation's first target, Mr Bolton tells me, will be Hillary Clinton, whose record as secretary of state should be highlighted (she was absent from the job, according to him, because she was bypassed by the White House and travelled too much).

I tell Mr Bolton that one can have some sympathy for the administration's anti-interventionist instincts in a conflict-ridden Middle East that is changing at lightning speed. He will hear none of it. In retrospect, he says, the decline in American influence around the world will be seen as a "very bad thing, like the 20s, when we weren't paying attention". He pauses, which makes me think perhaps he knows that is too harsh. Not so. "I think that is actually an unfair rap on the 20s -we were trying to pay attention."

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