Pete Hegseth’s broker tried to make defense investments before Iran war

According to the Financial Times, a broker for US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sought to make large investments in major defense companies in the lead-up to the Iran war. The Pentagon has denied this report.

Financial Times gave this news on Tuesday Hegseth’s broker at banking giant Morgan Stanley approached BlackRock in February to invest millions of dollars in its iShares Defense Industrials Active ETF.

The ETF, which has about $3.1 billion in assets, counts companies like RTX Corp. — formerly known as Raytheon — Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman among its largest holdings. BlackRock data shown.

The Defense Industrials Active ETF has lost 12.4% over the past month, roughly around the time the Iran war began, according to LSEG data.

The FT also said that the investment discussed by Hegseth’s broker ultimately did not go ahead because the fund was not available to Morgan Stanley clients to buy at the time. It was also not known whether the broker had any other defence-related investments.

Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell rejected the FT report in a post on xCalled it “completely false and fabricated” and demanded the FT retract the article.

Parnell said that neither Hegseth nor any of his representatives contacted BlackRock about any such investment. “This is yet another baseless, dishonest smear designed to mislead the public,” he said.

The US war against Iran has reached its fifth week and the conflict shows no signs of slowing down.

American marines have arrived in this area Washington Post reporting That the Pentagon was “preparing for weeks of ground operations in Iran.”

Trump also said on Monday that the US would “completely” destroy Iran’s power generation plants, oil wells and Kharg Island if the strategically important Strait of Hormuz is not reopened “immediately” and a peace deal is not reached “soon.”