vehicle. we talked about space and space is the real arena of competition. the chindz have developed a hypersonic missile capacity. the russians have fielded nonballistic missiles so our defenses have difficulty dealing with these potentially. so there s a lot of new technology out there that we have to be very careful about. we ve been really focused on casualties in iraq and afghanistan. we ve been focused on hamid karzai. we ve been focused on al qaeda. and we ve done it for a decade or more. we ve tried to move forward with other technologies, but there s another world out there and they re serious about matching you us. all right, general. this debate is only starting now on these new proposals. let s see what happens. always good to have you here in the situation room. thank you. the chicago mayor comes to the defense of his former boss. stand by for cnn s interview with rahm emanuel on another
we heard from john bolton in the last hour. there are estimates that iran could be able to assemble a nuclear bomb potentially in six to 12 months. what do you think? first, i thought they were realistic estimates. national security estimate put out when i was running for president in 2007 early 2008 that iran ceased the nuclear ambitions. i thought it was a sick political document to hurt president bush as opposed to everything i know about intelligence. a good deal. i ve been involved with that longer than i have politics. no doubt they re on the way to establish a nuclear weapon. they re close. i can t tell you if it s six months or two years but foreseeable future. forget about the missile capacity. focus on handling nuclear weapons to the terrorists they are employing, using, financing.
i think everyone realizesist a very severe situation, very violent, and we ve got to coordinate. this is not something that can be a knee-jerk reaction to. you ve got to coordinate with the rest of the community. i get that. steve, what do we do next? assuming we get our own folks out, do we get involved? how do we get involved? do we when you say no-fly zone, does that mean if the libyan jets are going to fly around their own people we shoot them out of the sky? i think that s what it beginning to look like. if you see the scale of violence begin, that gadhafi and his people have been threatening, and which some of the defecting diplomats have said is until way, if it s true, it s have i have i scary, then i think you would see some form of commitment. again, the clock is ticking. that s the problem here, but you would see a rush by some to begin to we have drones, we have various kinds of missile
through it. as always, it has required again what i talked about earlier, these cross-sectarian, cross-ethnic coalitions and deals which is okay. that s a good development for iraq frankly. we used to say when i was there, you can shout, but please don t shoot. shouting is i think a very acceptable alternative to shooting. do you think that the iranian regime has made a decision that they re going to try to get a nuclear weapon? or do you think it s still unclear whether they want a robust nuclear civilian capacity and a robust missile capacity, but they haven t yet decided whether they will join the two? i think it s something slightly different actually. i think, first of all, there can be a debate about whether or not the final decision has been made. i think probably that final decision has not been made by
so mike, are officials there saying anything about this latest launch and what we might learn from it? reporter: jon, u.s. official we ve talked to are not disputing a launch of some sort. it is safe to say the united states various agencies are taking a look at that launch to see what may be learned in terms of the sophistication of the iran technology as you mentioned and the lead into me. the interest is that space rocketry can be used the same technology mirrors if you will long-range missile capacity and so to see how sophisticated the rocket was today may tell u.s. officials precisely how the iranians are doing in terms of developing some of their longer range missiles. so there should be a lot of information to be learned but some of the people we ve talked to have said don t necessarily believe the hype from the iranians. they re famous for putting things on state run television and then sometimes what you see on state run television isn t exactly what happened john. jon. j