TEHRAN, Iran - The White House said President Barack Obama is "deeply disappointed" by Iran's sentencing of an American journalist to eight years in prison for spying.

Obama's deputy national security adviser, Denis McDonough, said 31-year-old Roxana Saberi is an American reporter who was simply practicing journalism. The U.S. is working with Swiss diplomats in Iran to get details about the court's decision and to ensure Saberi's well-being.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., from Saberi's home state, also criticized the sentencing on Saturday.

"We will continue to vigorously raise our concerns to the Iranian government," Clinton said in a statement released by the State Department.

Dorgan called the sentencing "a shocking miscarriage of justice."

Saberi, a former Miss North Dakota, was arrested in late January and initially accused of working without press credentials. But earlier this month, an Iranian judge leveled a far more serious allegation, charging her with spying for the United States.

She appeared before an Iranian court behind closed doors on Monday in an unusually swift one-day trial. The Fargo, N.D., native had been living in Iran for six years and had worked as a freelance reporter for several news organizations, including National Public Radio and the British Broadcasting Corp.

Her lawyer Abdolsamad Khorramshahi said he will appeal the verdict.

Her father, Reza Saberi, told the NPR that his daughter had been coerced into statements that she later retracted. "She was deceived," he said. "She is quite depressed about this matter and she wants to go on a hunger strike. And if she does, she is so frail it can be very dangerous to her health."

Strained ties

The United States has called the charges against Saberi baseless and has demanded her release. The conviction and prison sentence could put strains on efforts to improve ties.

President Barack Obama has said he wants to engage Iran in talks on its nuclear program and other issues — a departure from the tough talk of the Bush administration.

Iran has been mostly lukewarm to the idea, but on Thursday Iran's hard-line president gave the clearest signal yet that the Islamic Republic was also willing to start a new relationship with Washington.

The United States severed diplomatic relations with Iran after its 1979 Islamic revolution and takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Human rights groups have repeatedly criticized Iran for arresting journalists and suppressing freedom of speech. The government has arrested several Iranian-Americans in the past few years, citing alleged attempts to overthrow its Islamic government through what it calls a "soft revolution." But they were never put on trial and were eventually released from prison.

'One of the brightest people'

Saberi's father is Iranian and her mother Japanese, but she was born in the United States and attended grade school in Fargo. Her ninth-grade history teacher, Vic Youngs, called her "one of the brightest people I've ever had in class."