New Delhi, March 31 -- A broker acting on behalf of Pete Hegseth, the US Defence Secretary, reportedly attempted to secure a multimillion-dollar investment in a major defence-focused fund in the weeks before Washington launched military strikes against Iran, a disclosure that the Pentagon has moved swiftly to deny.

According to a Financial Times investigation citing three people familiar with the matter, Hegseth's broker at Morgan Stanley approached BlackRock in February about purchasing a significant stake in the asset manager's Defense Industrials Active ETF. The timing of the inquiry, which came shortly before US and Israeli forces launched coordinated military action against Tehran, has drawn immediate scrutiny from financial analyst...