A group of mourners holding pictures of top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, Iraq on Saturday. Photo: Xinhua/Khalil Dawood

The Trump administration is woefully under-prepared for a full-blown war with Iran, a much stronger and more determined adversary than Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan or the former Yugoslavia. 

A war with Iran will not be easily won, and a prolonged military engagement with Tehran will be an enormous burden - if not catastrophic - for the US economy. It would also significantly dim Trump's chances of re-election in November. 

US President Donald Trump tweeted "All is well" after Iran fired a dozen missiles on two US military air bases in Iraq early on Wednesday. 

The attack fulfilled Tehran's promise to retaliate for the US drone assassination of a senior Iranian commander days ago. Amid a chorus of rising opposition to war in the US, the White House needs more time to respond. 

Obviously, Trump was trying to hide his usually bellicose tone in his twitter post, and he wanted to decelerate the tensions, because the US can hardly afford to fight another hot and costly war in the Middle East. 

Trump was not trying to "save America's face" this time, even if the Iranian missiles tore the two airstrips apart. He wrote that casualties and damage were being assessed. 

A long-time property developer and businessman before becoming US president in 2016, Trump knows that if he rushes the US to a military confrontation that he has jitters about fighting and no confidence to win, the American economy in 2020 is almost certain to hit the wall. 

The country's GDP growth will likely falter to an annualized 1 percent or less, instead of 2 percent as forecast by the IMF earlier. And, the US federal debt is set to balloon in a war with Iran, adding to the current over $20 trillion US debt burden. 

A precipitous economic slowdown, widening layoffs, soft wages, a bulging federal deficit, plus a war in the Middle East, will bedevil the US economy at the end of 2020, a time when Trump will need American voters' ballots the most. 

Also, a military conflict will seriously dampen Wall Street, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average down by several thousand points. Even if the Federal Reserve is obliged to slash benchmark rates to help, the gravity of an epoch war with Iran will freak out investors. The trepidation of that war is just hard to overcome. Americans remember the heartbreak of the Vietnam War.

A meltdown of the US stock markets will lead to evaporation of billions of dollars on the part of American middle-class families. When these people are angered and revolt, the days for Trump being able to sit in the White House will be numbered. 

Therefore, it makes sense for the US president to calm down, lick his inner wounds and ruffle his own feathers, this time. 

The author is an editor with the Global Times. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn