Pete Hegseth, attempted to make large investments in defense companies weeks before Iran War

U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s personal broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock in February about executing a multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager’s Defense Industrials Active ETF.

The $3.2 billion fund, ticker IDEF, focuses on companies poised to benefit from increased government spending on defense and security. Its largest holdings include RTX, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Palantir — all major contractors that count the Pentagon as their biggest customer.

The outreach occurred in the weeks immediately before the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran. Hegseth has been one of the war’s chief architects and its most vocal public advocate inside the Trump administration.

BlackRock flagged the inquiry internally because of the high-profile client. The investment ultimately did not proceed because the ETF was not yet available on Morgan Stanley’s platform for purchase. The fund launched in May of the previous year.

BlackRock, Morgan Stanley and the Pentagon all declined to comment.

The timing has sparked intense scrutiny on Wall Street, where analysts are already examining trades made ahead of major Trump administration decisions. ETFs like IDEF allow rapid exposure to the entire defense sector with lower fees and favorable tax treatment.

Although the deal never closed, the fact that Hegseth’s broker was actively seeking large-scale exposure to companies that profit directly from escalated conflict raises direct questions about advance knowledge of the impending large-scale U.S. military action against Iran.