Freedom is on the mar- uh, well....

Shirin Ebadi is a lawyer in Iran. She also is a human rights activist. She also is the winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, the first Iranian and the first Muslim woman to do so. She also has written a volume of her memoirs.

And she also is unable to get it published in the United States - because, as today's BBC notes,

[a]ccording to US Treasury Department regulations, American companies are not allowed to publish works by authors in Iran, Cuba and Sudan unless the works have already been completed without any American involvement.

American publishers are also forbidden from promoting or marketing works from the three countries unless they obtain a licence from the Treasury Department.

The three countries are under US sanctions and when they say "without any American involvement," they mean any. This has come up before: When I posted about it back on March 5 I noted that according to Treasury, even the simplest editing of a manuscript such as "reorder[ing] paragraphs or sentences, correct[ing] syntax or grammar, or replac[ing] 'inappropriate words'" could trigger a charge of trading with the enemy, with penalties of up to a $500,000 fine and 10 years in prison.

The net effect, of course, is to make it difficult for any literary or scientific work from the countries in question to be published here. Scientific journals are especially hard-hit because suggestions for revisions in a manuscript, a normal part of a peer-review process, would be illegal.

Ebadi is not taking this quietly. She has sued the US government, calling the restrictions unconstitutional as well as a "critical missed opportunity" for Americans to learn more Iran and for "a better understanding to be achieved between our two countries."

Her suit has been combined with other suits brought by publishers and authors. But no hearing date has been set.

Perhaps - just perhaps, I don't count on anything, but just perhaps - the image of a Nobel Peace Prize winner who has campaigned courageously against some of the very abuses that the US condemns in Iran being unable to tell her story in the US will embarrass the ignorant cretins at Treasury into rethinking their closed-minded policy.