On a sunny afternoon in late February, Vanity Fairmet with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell (2002-5), who is currently an adjunct professor of government and public policy at the College of William & Mary. Fresh from a meeting with legislators in Washington, D.C., Colonel Wilkerson arrived at the Blue Talon, a stylish brasserie located curiously in the heart of Colonial Williamsburg, to talk about Iran’s nuclear capabilities and their implications.

Vanity Fair: How close is Iran to having a nuclear weapon, and what should our response be?

*Lawrence Wilkerson:*I’ve spent almost two full days now on the Hill, essentially talking to Democrats and Republicans, senators and representatives and their staffs, about the catastrophe that would result if we use military force against Iran.

What I understand from talking with the intel community and with people in the White House is that our position—and I agree with this position—is that Iran has not made a decision to weaponize. Iran may be looking for a Japanese-type, latent capability. The inclination, I think, of the current government is not to make that decision. What I’m very concerned about is that our diplomacy, such as it is—mostly sanctions—is forcing them into a decision that we don’t want them to make, which is to weaponize.

Confronted with Israel, which is already possessed of nuclear weapons, and Pakistan, already possessed of nuclear weapons, I think Iran does want the latent capabilities.

But that’s not the same thing as saying we want to weaponize now?

In that space, there’s room for diplomacy.

So the irony is that if we rattle the sabers too much, we’ll force them to do exactly what we don’t want them to do.

Precisely. And that’s what some neo-conservatives and their allies want to happen. They want regime change.

That was one of the arguments for the Iraq war—out of the chaos a new nation will be built.

Look what’s happening right now in different countries. Egypt is looking grim, and Libya is looking grimmer. In fact, this morning I got a report from Iraq that’s pretty grim. Look what we have happening in Iraq right now. We have [Iraq’s religious leader] al-Sadr arming one side of the Syrian problem, and we have [Iraq’s prime minister] al-Malaki arming another part of the Syrian problem. And people think this can’t jump borders and become a regional and perhaps even a global confrontation? It certainly can.

Israel makes the argument that if they delay a military strike, all of Iran’s nuclear facilities will be bunkered down so deep they’ll be unreachable.

The truth is—and my Air Force colleagues have given me some of this—the Israelis could not take out Iran’s facilities now. The Israelis could not mount, without going to desperate ends, a 100-plane strike, which is going to be necessary. They can barely get a hundred airplanes out of their fleet. If they go to the end of their operational tether without refueling help from us, I predict that it will be as big a failure or worse than their incursion into Lebanon in July 2006. And I say that for two reasons: 1) they will fail militarily, and 2) regardless of their exquisite public-affairs campaign to portray it otherwise, the world will know they failed. So, this is a disaster for Israel if it goes ahead and executes.

Wouldn’t there be intense rallying for our support, especially now during an election year?

Yes. That makes President Obama’s situation dicey because—and I think that’s probably what Prime Minister Netanyahu is thinking about—this period of vulnerability, if you will, is political—it isn’t military. And if President Obama is re-elected, then Netanyahu’s got problems, because I think he’d be attacking Iran in utter defiance of the United States.