MIAMI — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth traveled to Florida on Thursday for meetings with senior military leaders about two priority issues for the Trump administration — the ongoing conflict in Iran and narcotics trafficking.
Mr. Hegseth hosted the Americas Counter Cartel Conference at U.S. Southern Command headquarters in the Miami area. Pentagon officials said he will be meeting with Latin American officials to compare strategies for combating the international drug trade.
White House official Stephen Miller told a conference room filled with generals from Latin America that military force is the only effective means of defeating drug traffickers.
“The cartels that operate in this hemisphere are the ISIS and the al Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere, and should be treated just as brutally and just as ruthlessly as we treat those organizations,” he said.
He said nations have learned that, after decades of effort, there isn’t a criminal justice solution to the cartel problem.
“The reason why this is a conference with military leadership and not a conference of lawyers is because these organizations can only be defeated with military power,” Mr. Miller said. “I see heads nodding up front because they understand. You’re dealing with lawyers in your own country.”
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Following the conference at Southern Command, Mr. Hegseth flew to Tampa, where U.S. Central Command is based. Adm. Brad Cooper, who is the overall commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, will update him on Operation Epic Fury.
The first four days of the mission included more than 2,000 strikes with over 2,000 precision munitions launched from the air, land and sea. Pentagon officials said the U.S. has decimated Iran’s ballistic missile capability and the bulk of its navy.
The U.S. is expected to have complete air superiority over Iran in days, officials said.
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