Last week, British news source Express provided a terrifying quote about ISIS from Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, the former head of the British Army nuclear team.

According to the article, Bretton-Gordon said, “The extremist jihadist group already had chemical weapons such as mustard gas and it is ‘only a matter of time’ before it manages to launch an attack capable of destroying a substantial part of a city.”

The Express article notes that Bretton-Gordon also said, “The risk of an improvised nuclear bomb being detonated in a foreign city has ‘increased substantially’ because of tensions with Russia.”

The United States and its allies should do all that they can and hold out as long as possible before putting troops on the ground; ground wars in the Middle East have, recently, proven difficult and costly. There are, however, certain things that could push the United States into an official declaration of war against a terrorist group and certain things that ought to push the United States into an official declaration of war. The Daily Iowan Editorial Board believes that a terrorist organization as powerful as ISIS in possession of a WMD is one of the few things that would merit the beginning of a war.

So, it seems, if Bretton-Gordon’s comments were more literal and less a function of rhetoric, it is no longer a question of if the United States declares war on ISIS but when.

Since the beginning of this election season, and before, the thought of declaring war on ISIS has been a point of contention. After all, how do you declare war on a terrorist organization? How do you declare war on an entity that does not have statehood and whose sole mission for existence is the destruction of established states?

ISIS is unlike most terrorist organizations the United States has ever fought. Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban, are all horrific and destructive in their own right, but ISIS is in a league of its own.

According to a Newsweek article from January, ISIS’ budget for 2015 was a staggering $2 billion and the terrorist organization had a $250 million budget surplus. Moreover, a CNN article from February says ISIS has several sources of revenue; one of the largest is the production and smuggling of oil, from which ISIS makes $1 million to $2 million each day.

The $2 billion budget is virtually negligible compared with the $560 billion budget of the U.S. Department of Defense (according to the fiscal 2016 budget request). But it is also an unusually large sum for a terrorist organization, especially one that is virtually independently funded.

Moreover, ISIS’ meteoric rise — the speed with which it has mobilized — as the most prominent terrorist group in the region and possibly the world has made the scenario even worse. The group’s power has gotten to the point that hearing that it may one day acquire a nuclear weapon is frightening but not shocking.

A war with ISIS would prove to the world that the United States recognizes ISIS for the legitimate threat that it is, but it also opens the flood gates to the ramifications that come with such an assertion. Not only does that bring validity to ISIS but it also threatens American lives for a cause that may be unwinnable.

But if ISIS ever does procure a WMD, the risks of not declaring war may prove far more disastrous.