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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her daughter, Gabriella. Photograph: PA

An imprisoned British-Iranian mother would face separation from her three-year-old British daughter under a two-tier system which means the UK government denies help to people with dual nationality, an MP has said.

Tulip Siddiq, who is Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffes local MP, said she had been shocked by a meeting with the Foreign Office in which she said a minister implied the government was willing to help the charity workers young daughter, Gabriella, who is solely a British citizen, more than her.

The UK government has raised Zaghari-Ratcliffes case with Iranian authorities since her arrest in Iran last year as she attempted to return to Britain with Gabriella after visiting family. Dual nationals, however, are not able to access the same levels of consular assistance.

Siddiq told the Guardian her meeting before the general election with Tobias Ellwood, who has since moved to the Ministry of Defence, had an ultra-defensive atmosphere and said she left feeling shocked at the response from the government.

I had the strong impression from the meeting that their priority was making sure they got Gabriella back to the UK, seeing as she is a full British citizen, rather than helping Nazanin. That would take the pressure off them, given Nazanin is a dual citizen, the Labour MP said.

Gabriella is being looked after by her Iranian grandparents while her mother is in prison. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who travelled to Iran on her Iranian passport, is allowed some irregular access to her daughter, which her family have said is a lifeline for her while she is imprisoned.

The Foreign Offices current guidance meant Britain effectively operates a two-tier system for citizenship when protecting British citizens abroad, Siddiq said.

The guidance states the UK would not normally offer support or get involved in dealings between you and the authorities of that state if a dual national is arrested in a country where they also hold citizenship.

A Foreign Office spokesman said the government may make an exception if it judged a person to be particularly vulnerable, for example, if the case involves murder, forced marriage or an offence which carries the death penalty.

However, the help we can provide will depend on the circumstances, and the country of the persons other nationality agreeing to it, he said. All UK passports contain a warning about dual nationality. In the notes section, it says that British nationals who are also nationals of another country cannot be protected by Her Majestys representatives against the authorities of that country.

Siddiq said the Foreign Office must take a more robust approach to defending the rights of dual nationals abroad, with more than 600,000 Britons who hold additional passports not automatically entitled to consular protection.

Our law must change to ensure greater protection when dual nationals are detained, she said. FCO staff care about Nazanins plight, but they are hamstrung by an approach that isnt strong enough. The government must state that there should be no exception to taking clearly documented action on behalf of all UK nationals facing breaches of their human rights.

The MP for Hampstead and Kilburn will lead a debate in Westminster Hall on the topic on Tuesday, and has also drafted a 10-minute rule bill which would give Foreign Office officials the power to take a more robust and transparent approach. If selected, the bill would see a policy of escalation formalised and families and legal representation of the detained made aware of the process.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 38, was arrested at Tehran airport in April 2016, accused of attempting to orchestrate a soft overthrow of the Islamic republic, charges her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said were complete fabrication and linked to her work as a project manager for the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Her conviction was upheld by Irans supreme court in April this year. Ratcliffe, has said he was deeply concerned for his wifes physical and mental health while she was being held in Tehrans Evin prison.

In June, the foreign minister Alistair Burt acknowledged that dual citizenship made it far tougher for the UK to act. The Iranian position on dual nationality makes progress difficult and we do not interfere with the legal systems of other countries, he said.

His predecessor said there were similar difficulties. The Iranian government does not recognise dual nationality and does not permit our consular staff to visit British-Iranian dual nationals detained there, Ellwood told MPs in September last year.

Siddiq said she was frustrated the government had never openly called for Zaghari-Ratcliffes release or publicly declared her innocence.

She is held on ridiculous charges of espionage that the government has not refuted despite numerous requests, the MP said. I do think there is more than meets the eye behind the lack of action.

Dozens of dual nationals are believed to be imprisoned in Iran with little recourse to consular support. One lawyer told the Guardian in April as many as 40 could be imprisoned in the country, among them Kamal Foroughi, a British-Iranian businessman, has been in jail since 2011.

His MP, the Conservative Oliver Dowden, has written a previous joint letter with Siddiq to the Foreign Office, signed by 216 fellow MPs.

Siddiq said she was hopeful that she would get the backing from a number of Conservative MPs who had supported the letter for a change in the law. This isnt about me opposing the Conservative government, this is about taking constructive action to protect the rights of vulnerable people, she said.

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MP says UK denying help to British-Iranian mother in Tehran jail - The Guardian

This 2009 photo released by a friend of Xiyue Wang shows Wang at his apartment in Hong Kong. Princeton University professor Stephen Kotkin, who advised Wang, defended his former student as innocent of all charges against him. Friend of Xiyue Wang/AP hide caption

Iran says it has sentenced an American graduate student to 10 years in prison for spying for U.S. and British intelligence agencies. The Princeton University student was in Iran doing research when he was arrested.

Xiyue Wang, 37, is pursuing a Ph.D. in Eurasian history, studying local government in predominantly Muslim regions during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Stephen Kotkin, Wang's advisor at Princeton, says Wang came well-prepared for an extremely ambitious thesis topic.

"He had tremendous background, life experiences, linguistic capabilities, and so he entered the program and hit the ground running and developed his interests even more," Kotkin says.

The fieldwork stage of Wang's scholarly research took him to Iran about a year ago, Kotkin says. Before he left, Wang called upon established scholars for information.

"Everything he did is normal absolutely everything he did is normal, standard practice for scholars in this region and elsewhere," Kotkin says.

When doing academic fieldwork, he says, a researcher's time is limited but the need for documentation is infinite.

"So you're hurrying, hurrying, hurrying to encompass all the documents that you can, sometimes photocopying and scanning, and then trying to bring those out for further study," he explains.

But Wang never got that opportunity. He was arrested 10 months ago. Princeton says it has been working quietly to win his release.

"He was arrested in Iran last summer, while there doing scholarly research on the administrative and cultural history of the late Qajar dynasty in connection with his Ph.D. dissertation," Princeton spokesman Daniel Day said in a statement. "Since his arrest, the university has worked with Mr. Wang's family, the U.S. government, private counsel and others to facilitate his release."

This weekend, the Mizan news agency, a mouthpiece for Iran's judiciary, broke the news of Wong's 10-year sentence.

It said Wang was accused of gathering confidential articles with the intention of delivering them to the State Department and Western academic institutions.

Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, says materials "dealing with matters going back to the 19th century would be a very different matter than, say, Iran's ongoing nuclear program."

Wong is a U.S. citizen, born in China. His arrest comes as several Iranian-Americans are already being held in jails in Iran.

Vatanka says Wang may have been caught up in a power struggle in Iran between hardliners and more the moderate government of President Hassan Rouhani. Two years ago, Rouhani signed a nuclear agreement with the U.S. and other world powers to curb Iran's nuclear capability in exchange for easing economic sanctions. Since then, Rouhani has been trying to bring in foreign investment and burnish Iran's image, Vatanka says.

"When something like this happens, it takes them back 10 steps to images of Iran that they certainly don't think are helpful for the kind of future of the country that they'd like to build," he says.

Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution says these sorts of arrests and prison sentences are a persistent risk in Iran, especially for individuals traveling on their own, students and dual nationals.

"There's often a temptation to look for some kind of logic here," she says. "I think that this particular case highlights the fact that the logic is simply the paranoia of the Islamic Republic its judiciary and its security services in particular."

The State Department issued a statement saying it's aware of the reports of Wang's incarceration and is calling for the "immediate release of all U.S. citizens unjustly detained in Iran so they can return to their families."

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Academic Adviser Of US Student Jailed In Iran: 'Everything He Did Was Normal' - NPR

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A senior commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned the United States on Monday that if it designated the group a terrorist organization and applied new sanctions its action could be perilous for U.S. forces in the region.

U.S. officials said earlier this year that President Donald Trump's administration was considering a proposal that could lead to potentially categorizing the powerful Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization.

In Mid-June the U.S. Senate voted for new sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile program and other activities not related to the international nuclear agreement reached with the United States and other world powers in 2015.

To become law, the legislation must pass the House of Representatives and be signed by Trump.

"Counting the Revolutionary Guards the same as terrorist groups and applying similar sanctions to the Revolutionary Guards is a big risk for America and its bases and forces deployed in the region," said Armed Forces Chief of Staff Major General Mohammad Baqeri, according to Sepah News, an official news site of the Guards.

He did not give details on what form of risk he foresaw for U.S. forces and bases.

The Revolutionary Guards are the most powerful security force in Iran, overseeing vast economic holdings worth billions of dollars and wielding huge influence in its political system.

Baqeri said on Monday that Irans missile program was defensive and would never be up for negotiation, according to Sepah News.

Three days after the U.S. Senate voted on the new sanctions, Iran fired missiles into eastern Syria, targeting bases of Islamic State which had claimed responsibility for attacks in Tehran which killed 18 people.

The Revolutionary Guards are fighting in Syria against militant groups which oppose President Bashar al-Assad.

Baqeri was also critical of recent remarks by U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis that regime change would be necessary before the United States could normalize relations with Iran.

"American officials should speak a little more wisely, thoughtfully and maturely about other countries, particularly a powerful country like Iran which has stood against all plots with strength and pride," he said, according to Sepah News.

Reporting By Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Richard Balmforth

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Iran's Revolutionary Guards warn US against terrorist designation, new sanctions - Reuters

War between Israel and Iran could be "inevitable" by the end of the Syrian civil war, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's former national security advisor.

Iran is trying to build "an air base in Syria" and provide additional weaponry to terrorists in Lebanon in an apparent effort to threaten Israel from two directions, according to the Netanyahu ally. This fear has been brewing in U.S. and Israeli circles for years, but the Israelis think the terms of a nascent Syria ceasefire negotiated by the Trump administration, Russia and Jordan exacerbates the danger.

"Israel should take care for its strategic goal and this is to prevent the Iranians and Hezbollah from building launching pads in Syria," Yaakov Amidror, who counseled Netanyahu from 2011 to 2013, told reporters on a conference call hosted by The Israel Project. "If [the Iranians] begin to build infrastructure which might be used against Israel in Syria and will connect this land corridor into Iraq and begin to move materials from this area into Syria, that will make the war inevitable."

U.S. officials in both parties have raised the same concerns. "A permanent Iranian military base in Syria, potentially near the border with Israel or Jordan, would increase Iran's operational capacity to inflict serious damage against two of our closest allies in the region," Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., and Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., wrote in a May letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Netanyahu lobbied throughout the talks for Russia and the United States to keep Iran away from Israel's border and said Russian forces ought not to be trusted to police the southern Syria safe zone. But Israeli officials say their position was ignored in the final agreement.

"The agreement as it is now is very bad," an official told Haaretz. "It doesn't take almost any of Israel's security interests and it creates a disturbing reality in southern Syria. The agreement doesn't include a single explicit word about Iran, Hezbollah or the Shi'ite militias in Syria."

Russia and Iran have fought to protect Syrian President Bashar Assad for years, particularly after then-President Barack Obama declined to attack the Syrian regime in 2013 in response to Assad's use of chemical weapons. Tillerson's ceasefire negotiations may have been influenced by the Trump administration's overall determination to limit U.S. military deployments to Syria.

"They picked the best small footprint option that they could for the maximum amount of impact," House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told the Washington Examiner in June. "Meaning: small troop numbers, heavy involvement with our partners. But in the long run, I don't know if that's going to be successful."

Nunes and other lawmakers worry the United States will succeed in defeating the Islamic State in Syria, only to see Iran gain long-term strategic benefits from its decision to partner with Russia in support of embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad. Amidror hinted that Israel might tolerate some sort of Iranian presence in Syria that didn't impinge on Israeli security, but emphasized they will use their "military capability" to "destroy "enemy forces too close to their border.

"If that will not be taken into account by the those who are making those arrangements, the Americans the Russians and others, that might lead the IDF to intervene and to destroy every attempt to build infrastructure in Syria," the retired Israeli military intelligence general said. "We will not let the Iranians and Hezbollah to be the forces which will win from the long and very brutal war in Syria and to move the focus into Israel."

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Former Netanyahu adviser: Syria cease fire could make Israel-Iran war 'inevitable' - Washington Examiner

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region Iran has warned a visiting Kurdish delegation that an independence referendum will isolate and weaken Kurdistan.

Although this issue might be attractive in appearance, but actually, it will isolate and pressure the Iraqi Kurds and weaken Kurdistan and finally all of Iraq, Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Irans Supreme National Security Council, said in Tehran on Monday.

A peaceful, stable and united Iraq is what gives the country security and development. Friendly and neighboring countries should support Iraq, Shamkhani said, according to Mihr agency.

He accused regional and international countries of trying to weaken Iraq.

He made his comments in a meeting with members of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), including Kosrat Rasul and Mala Bakhtiar.

The PUK delegation reportedly thanked Iran for their support, noting historical ties between Tehran and Iraqi Kurds, according to IRNA.

The meeting was a friendly one, in which strengthening relations between Iran and the Kurdistan Region was stressed, Nazim Dabagh, the Kurdistan governments representative to Iran, told Rudaw.

He said Iran expressed support for the achievement of Kurdish rights within the framework of Iraqs constitution.

Iran, which backs the Shiite Hashd al-Shaabi armed force and holds influence over Baghdad, has expressed strong opposition to the Kurdish referendum, instead calling for a united Iraq.

Iraqs national sovereignty and integrity benefits all residents of the country and any change can make the country face chaos and crisis, a spokesperson for Irans foreign ministry, Bahram Qassemi, said in a weekly press conference, according to Fars News.

He said that Iraqs integrity is not negotiable, noting that Tehran has ties with the central government and Iraqi ethnic groups.

The PUK visit to Iran is at the request of Tehran, Dabagh told Rudaw on the weekend.

In a meeting in Erbil on Sunday with Irans ambassador to Iraq, Kurdistan Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani told Ambassador Iraj Masjedi that Tehran could play a positive role in resolving outstanding issues between Erbil and Baghdad.

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Iran: Independence referendum will isolate, weaken Kurdistan - Rudaw