Electrostate Watch

Iran Financial Times

Kenji Sato
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iran financial times

The Pentagon is demanding a retraction after a Financial Times report alleged that Defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s broker attempted to make a sizable investment in some of America’s largest defense companies just before the Iran war began. The paper reported on Monday that Hegseth’s financial broker at Morgan Stanley reached out to global asset manager BlackRock in February to inquire about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the iShares Defense Industrials Active ETF (exchange-traded fund), citing three people familiar with the matter.

The fund, which has assets currently valued at about $3.1 billion, launched last May and counts some of the world’s major defense contractors among its holdings, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX Corporation. Per the Financial Times, the broker’s query was flagged internally at BlackRock, but no investment ever took place, as the fund was not available for buys from Morgan Stanley clients at that time.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell issued a statement on social media denouncing the report, saying that Hegseth and the Department of Defense “remain unwavering in their commitment to the highest standards of ethics and strict adherence to all applicable laws and regulations.” Parnell demanded that the outlet take the report down. “This allegation is entirely false and fabricated. Neither Secretary Hegseth nor any of his representatives approached BlackRock about any such investment. This is yet another baseless, dishonest smear designed to mislead the public,” he said Monday.

“We demand an immediate retraction.” Since the war in Iran began with a series of United States and Israeli airstrikes in the region in late February, numerous reports have raised the specter of potential insider trading related to the conflict. Several anonymous Polymarket users wagered on the possibility of a U.S. strike on Iran just hours before the war commenced. NPR reports that one user on the prediction market won more than $500,000 on successful bets surrounding strikes on Iran as well as the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

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