"The case of Iran, a nuclear program that the Iranians admit was 18 years on, that we underestimated. And, in fact, we didn't discover it. It was discovered by a group of Iranian dissidents outside the country who pointed the international community at the location"
About this Quote
The most pointed move is outsourcing credibility to the least convenient source: “Iranian dissidents outside the country.” That detail is doing heavy work. It undercuts the myth of omniscience that Western intelligence and international inspectors often trade on, and it hints at the messy geopolitics of information: dissident groups have motives, patrons, and agendas, yet they can still be right. Kay isn’t romanticizing them; he’s exposing a dependency that rarely gets acknowledged in public.
Context matters: Kay is speaking from inside the post-9/11 ecosystem where Iraq’s WMD fiasco had already poisoned trust. By foregrounding a miss on Iran, he’s implicitly arguing that failures are not anomalies but structural features - confirmation bias, resource misallocation, and the comfort of assumptions. The subtext is a warning about epistemic humility: when discovery comes from outsiders, “international community” consensus looks less like coordination and more like catch-up.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Kay, David. (2026, January 17). The case of Iran, a nuclear program that the Iranians admit was 18 years on, that we underestimated. And, in fact, we didn't discover it. It was discovered by a group of Iranian dissidents outside the country who pointed the international community at the location. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-case-of-iran-a-nuclear-program-that-the-58892/
Chicago Style
Kay, David. "The case of Iran, a nuclear program that the Iranians admit was 18 years on, that we underestimated. And, in fact, we didn't discover it. It was discovered by a group of Iranian dissidents outside the country who pointed the international community at the location." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-case-of-iran-a-nuclear-program-that-the-58892/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The case of Iran, a nuclear program that the Iranians admit was 18 years on, that we underestimated. And, in fact, we didn't discover it. It was discovered by a group of Iranian dissidents outside the country who pointed the international community at the location." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-case-of-iran-a-nuclear-program-that-the-58892/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2026.
