No, there is very little truth to this.

The Iranians nationalized British oil assets in the late 40s/early 50s. The Iranians had a democratic process for their government which was fairly established. When they kicked the British out, they didn't have the engineers and other qualified personnel to run the refineries. Fearing their proximity to the Soviet Union and economic collapse, the CIA launched Operation Ajax. It was led by Kermit Roosevelt (the grandson of teddy). The plan was to stage a coup detat and overthrow the peacefully elected government, in it's place they would set up the shah of Iran. The first attempt failed but Roosevelt disobeyed orders and tried again. He succeeded.

It wasn't much of a secret to the Iranian people that the US was pulling the strings, but when the shah became abusive and oppressive, the Iranian people overthrew him...and blamed the Americans. The Iranian revolution took place in 1979, but after Ayatollah Khomeini tried to incite revolution in Iraq during his exile, Saddam and Khomeini weren't friends. Saddam captured territory in Iran. Since the Iranians weren't getting along with the Iraqis, the US sponsored Iraq and gave them huge military aid. We all saw how that turned out...

Read the book "All the Shah's Men" by Stephen Kinzer, phenomenal book, cautionary tale and the results of intervention are still being felt today.

If you are interested in reading more about this topic, I would suggest reading 'Iran and the CIA: The Fall of Mossaddeq Revisited" by Darioush Bayandor. Bayandor puts together a reasonable case: On August 15, 1953, the CIA did, indeed, stage a coup to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadeq. But that coup failed. By August 16, the agency had acknowledged its failure and the State Department had already ordered rapprochement with Mossadeq. Three days later, however, a few powerful clerics led by Ayatollah Borujerdi, among whose disciples was a junior cleric named Ruhollah Khomeini, orchestrated major unrest. This unrest, spurred by the clergy who felt threatened by Mossadeq’s promise of a secular democracy, facilitated the coup for which the CIA has been credited, and vilified, all these years. In my opinion, it is at least worth the read. Bayandor takes a few digs at 'All the Shah's Men' and critiques the current history of the coup for being too US-centric - i.e., that Iranians themselves are given little agency and are depicted as pawns for the CIA. He doesn't exonerate the CIA, but he does insist that this 'American meddling in a stable democracy' narrative gives no credence to the Iranian events/people on the ground. (EDIT: a few additional thoughts)

btw, Ray Takeyh is not an "Iranian historian" he's a washington "think tank" "policy" "wonk". He doesn't even speak Persian... edit: (didn't think he did from listening to him speak, e.g pronunciation of names).

Yeah... that's an interesting argument.

This is a very fastly evolving piece of history. Previously, there was no official conceit of US involvement, despite many leaks. However, in 2000, then SecState Albright confessed to the US role in a failed attempt at detente. Obama attempted the same in 2009.

But the big reveal was yet to come...

To celebrate the 60th aniversary of TPAJAX, the CIA went and declassified their existing records of it. The ACLU had actually managed to subpoena this in the 1980's when Kermit Roosevelt published Countercoup, but as of Aug 2013, the whole thing has been released, relatively unredacted.

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/

It gets rather tactical at times, so I wouldn't recommend it as a sole narrative, but there's plenty of smoking gun docs in there. Yes, operations frequently went sideways once they hit the field, but when has any operation ever gone exactly as planned?

Also, the Reuters story is just an EXSUM of his actual Foreign Affairs article:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141527/ray-takeyh/what-really-happened-in-iran

Much of what he cites (albeit selectively) is from the Aug 2013 release.