State Department, Memorandum of Conversation, Byroade to Matthews, "Proposal to Organize a Coup d'etat in Iran," Top Secret, November 26, 1952

Henry Byroade provides his superior, H. Freeman Matthews with a moderately lengthy memo on Great Britain's desire to promote a coup against the Mosaddeq government. He notes that the idea first came up in a paper the British presented to the Americans on October 8, 1952. Since then, three meetings had been held but the conclusion was that the prospects were not hopeful. The lack of a viable substitute for Mosaddeq and the risk of a Tudeh counter-action were among the reasons. Another very interesting argument is the fact that the U.S. at the time has plans to try to prop up Mosaddeq in some way in the event the British continue to be unsupportive of an oil deal. This is a new piece of evidence on the open question of whether the U.S. government genuinely sided with the Iranian prime minister against their principal ally, or simply paid lip service to the idea. Byroade offers a list of his own doubts about the coup proposal but still recommends that Matthews meet with British Minister Sir Christopher Steel to hear him out.

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https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//dc.html?doc=3914379-01-State-Department-Memorandum-of-Conversation

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914379/01-State-Department-Memorandum-of-Conversation.pdf