Norman Darbyshire (1924–1993) was a British spy who worked for the SOE and the MI6. He played a key role in the 1953 coup d'état that overthrew Mohammed Mossadegh, the democratically-elected prime minister of Iran. Espionage career Darbyshire was recruited into the Special Operations Executive and then joined the Secret Intelligence Service following its dissolution. He spent much of his career in the Middle East, in Iran, Lebanon, Egypt and Bahrain. Darbyshire was fluent in Persian language and spent three spells in Iran, being first sent to the World War II Anglo-Soviet occupied country in late 1943 for a mission lasting until the middle of 1947. During this period, he shared a house with Robin Zaehner and was in touch with The Rashidian Brothers. Darbyshire and Zaehner traveled to Jerusalem, Palestine in 1947 and set up a radio aimed at Iranian audience using the Near East Broadcasting Station facilities. He was posted to Iran again in late 1949 and continued to conduct covert operations with official cover. On 11 June 1950, he became the vice-consul in Mashhad before being transferred to Tehran and officially appointed as the Third Secretary at the British Embassy on 1 April 1951, in fact a promotion as the deputy to Monty Woodhouse in MI6 Tehran station. Aside from controlling the Rashidian network through Samuel Falle as intermediary, during the second spell in Iran he was directly in touch with Mohammad Reza Shah, "more on a social basis", and influencing him indirectly via figures like Ernest Perron. Darbyshire handled dozens of agents, both for intelligence-gathering and black operations. He had a number of deputies in the Iranian Parliament on the payroll who voted and spoke as they were instructed, as well as entryists in the communist Tudeh Party, the Lankarani brothers, who organized mobs attacking mosques and public places in the name of the party. In October 1952, the Iranian government closed down the British embassy and evicted all its staff, including Darbyshire. As a result, he was formally transferred to the British Middle East Office in Cairo on 26 October 1952, but actually replaced Woodhouse as the MI6 spymaster responsible for Iran, taking over the MI6 Iran station-in-exile located in Nicosia, Cyprus. He kept in touch with almost all assets inside Iran, most notably Rashidians, using radio transmissions and asked CIA's Kermit Roosevelt Jr. to join their coup d'état plan. Among other things, he was