> For years, I thought the CIA was the prime mover of the coup, but I was wrong.
I think the CIA was indeed the prime mover of the coup, at least according to the CIA's official history. Derbyshire, the person who was in charge of SIS's Iran branch, came up with the idea of a coup, but the Brits had not the capacity to pull it off and so they asked the CIA for help. The whole operation was very well documented by the declassified report entitled "CIA Clandestine Service History, Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-August 1953", which is downloadable from
I think you might have a different understanding of the phrase "prime mover" than the author. Aristotle used the term[1] to refer to the source of all motion, the idea being that motion had to begin with some entity moving without having been moved from something else, and then all other motion flowed from it. According to the history you give, Derbyshire would fit the definition of the prime mover here; he had the idea without it having come from another source, and so the CIA's action only came about as a result of that initial idea.
I think the CIA was indeed the prime mover of the coup, at least according to the CIA's official history. Derbyshire, the person who was in charge of SIS's Iran branch, came up with the idea of a coup, but the Brits had not the capacity to pull it off and so they asked the CIA for help. The whole operation was very well documented by the declassified report entitled "CIA Clandestine Service History, Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-August 1953", which is downloadable from
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/