The USS Toledo returned to the Naval Submarine Base New London in mid-April 2003 after having taken part in Operation Iraqi Freedom. On 7 December 2004, Toledo returned to Groton, Connecticut, after a six-month deployment in the Persian Gulf with the John F. Kennedy carrier strike group that included port calls in Crete, Dubai, and Bahrain. Her route home from Bahrain was unusual, rounding the Cape of Good Hope rather than using the Suez Canal. Once back in the North Atlantic, she was diverted for a classified drug interdiction mission with the Joint Interagency Task Force–South in the Caribbean Sea.