When Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi went to publish her memoirs in the US she discovered that “doing so would be illegal, under a trade embargo intended to punish repressive governments such as the regime in Tehran that once sent her to jail. Last week, Ms. Ebadi and her American literary agency, the Strothman Agency of Boston, sued the Treasury Department, which enforces the sanctions, in Manhattan federal district court. The suit says the regulations ignore congressional directives to exempt information and creative works from the trade sanctions, and more broadly violate the First Amendment rights of Americans to read what they wish.”