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A top American air force general has predicted that the US and China will probably go to war in 2025, in the most dramatic warning yet from a senior military officer about the likelihood of a conflict over Taiwan, the Financial Times reports.

General Mike Minihan, head of US Air Mobility Command, said the two military powers were likely to end up at war because of a series of circumstances that would embolden Chinese president Xi Jinping.

“I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me we will fight in 2025,” Minihan wrote in a private memo to his top commanders obtained by NBC news and seen by the Financial Times.

“Xi secured his third term [as Communist party general secretary] and set [sic] his war council in October 2022. Taiwan’s presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a reason,” Minihan wrote. Minihan added that the 2024 presidential elections in the US would create a “distracted America” that would benefit the Chinese president.

“Xi’s team, reason, and opportunity are all aligned for 2025,” he concluded.

The memo comes as tensions remain very high over Taiwan, a democratically-ruled country over which China has long claimed sovereignty. Minihan’s comments are the starkest prediction from a senior military commander and a rare instance of a top officer suggesting so clearly that the US would respond to a Chinese attack on Taiwan.

The comments come one week before secretary of state Antony Blinken is due to become the first cabinet secretary from President Joe Biden’s administration to visit China.

China has over the past two years been flying larger sorties of warplanes near Taiwan. Last August, the Chinese military conducted large-scale exercises that included firing missiles over Taiwan in response to then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visiting Taipei.

Underscoring the tension, Biden has on four occasions said he would order the US military to intervene if China attacked Taiwan. His warnings appeared to change a longstanding policy known as “strategic ambiguity” under which Washington does not say whether the US military would intervene in a conflict over Taiwan.