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Slightly related question. I heard a guy on NPR claim that it was known that the Saudis had wired up all the major oil fields with Semtex explosives during the 90s and had made it clear to the US that they would destroy the oil if we ever tried to invade them like Iraq. Personally, this sounds pretty sketchy. Is there any evidence that the Saudis ever did something like this?
Well first off, the Arabian-American Oil Company (Aramco) was a consortium of, well, American companies, not British ones.
Before I get further into this, my primary main sources are The Prize by Daniel Yergin (history of the oil industry) and All The Shah's Men by Stephen Kinzer (the coup, also some more history on APOC/AIOC/BP.
I'm at work and can't give a full overview of the crises right now (there were several) but there are a few key points.
In the 50s, the UK had not developed nor even discovered its North Sea reserves and was thus dependent on Iran and other parts of the Middle East. The US was then very secure in its oil supplies due to domestic production and didn't need Saudi Arabian oil in the same way.
The British Empire was still in existence. The egos of British political and business leaders had a significant impact on their unwillingness to negotiate with Iran on concessions.
3). The Cold War was starting, and the idea (if not reality) of Mossadegh being sympathetic to the Soviets was used to scare the US into supporting the coup.