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Iranians struggling to secure free speech at home are facing a fresh set of restrictions from the U.S. government. The U.S. Department of the Treasury has ruled that editing or publishing scientific manuscripts from Iran, Libya, Sudan and Cuba violates the trade embargo on these countries. And U.S. publishers and scientific societies are divided over how to respond. At a meeting in Washington on 9 February, David Mills, the treasury official in charge of implementing the policy, told representatives of 30 publishers that anyone wanting to publish papers from Iran should seek a licence from the treasury department. He also suggested that U.S. scientists collaborating with Iranians could be prosecuted.