Operation Merlin was a United States covert operation under the Clinton Administration to provide Iran with a botched design for a component of a nuclear weapon ostensibly in attempts to delay the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program, to get more information about State's nuclear weapons program, or to simply frame Iran. The intentions behind Operation Merlin may have been to help the Iranians develop weapons of mass destruction so that future military conflicts with the state would be properly justified. In other words, sabotaged blueprints for a "firing set" were underhanded onto the Iranians laps because the CIA, for whatever reasons, wanted to guarantee that Iran would have nuclear weapons in the years to come.[77][78]