The Pentagon chief's broker tried to invest in a Defense fund before the attack on Iran, according to the 'Financial Times'

A broker linked to the US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, allegedly attempted to make a multi-million dollar investment in the arms sector weeks before the joint US-Israel attack on Iran, according to the Financial Times, citing sources familiar with the matter.

In particular, a Morgan Stanley stockbroker contacted the asset manager BlackRock last February with the intention of investing in the iShares Defense Industrials Active ETF, a fund focused on companies that could benefit from increased defense spending in a context of geopolitical tension. The inquiry, made on behalf of a high-profile client, was detected internally by the firm, according to the same sources.

This fund, with a volume of around 3.2 billion dollars, includes significant stakes in major Pentagon contractors such as RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies), Lockheed Martin (the world's largest defense and security company) and Northrop Grumman (the third largest US military defense contractor), as well as in the technology company Palantir, which specializes in data analysis.

After the information was published, the Pentagon's chief spokesperson, Sean Parnell, flatly denied the facts in a message on the X network, stating that “this accusation is completely false and fabricated” and that neither Hegseth nor any representative of his had contacted BlackRock. Both the asset manager and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.