Iran has freed an Iranian-Canadian who spent five years in prison after being initially sentenced to death on charges of espionage, media reports said Tuesday.

Toronto resident Hamid Ghassemi-Shall, 44, was released Monday night from the notorious Evin prison in Tehran, the opposition website Kaleme.com reported.

The White House would not rule out Monday a meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Iran's new President Hasan Rowhani on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meanwhile will attend a meeting of major powers this week with Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Tehran's nuclear program, it said.

Iran on Monday finally took control of its civilian nuclear reactor at Bushehr, a project begun 37 years ago by West Germany, wracked by setbacks, and finished by Russia.

Tehran has long touted Bushehr as proof of its peaceful nuclear intentions, but neighboring countries and the West have expressed concern over the presence, in a volatile region, of the world's last remaining nuclear reactor that does not adhere to the post-Chernobyl Convention on Nuclear Safety.

Iran paraded 30 missiles with a nominal range of 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) Sunday, the first time it had displayed so many with the theoretical capacity to hit Israeli targets.

Iran displayed 12 Sejil and 18 Ghadr missiles at the annual parade marking the anniversary of the outbreak of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

President Hassan Rowhani demanded Sunday that Western governments recognize Iran's right to enrich uranium in any nuclear deal, ahead of his departure for key talks at the United Nations.

Rowhani, a moderate on Iran's political scene whose election in June had raised Western hopes of a breakthrough in long-stumbling nuclear talks, said a deal to allay Western suspicions was dependent on acceptance of Iran's enrichment program.

The United States welcomed what it said was constructive rhetoric from Iran Friday, following a report that its leaders want a swift deal on their nuclear program to end crippling sanctions.

But the White House stressed that despite signs of a rare opening between the two enemies, it needed to see concrete action to prove Iran was prepared to engage.

French President Francois Hollande will meet his Iranian counterpart Hasan Rowhani on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly next week, Hollande's office announced Friday.

The announcement comes amid growing signs the recently-elected Rowhani could also meet with U.S. President Barack Obama in New York in what would be a landmark moment for Iran's relationship with the United States and the broader international community.

An Iranian opposition leader urged the United Nations Thursday to help free seven Iranians she said were being held in Iraq after a massacre at a camp for exiles killed 52.

The seven Iranian exiles, members of the People's Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), disappeared after a September 1 attack in Camp Ashraf, northeast of Baghdad, that left 52 people dead.

President Hasan Rowhani appears to be keeping campaign pledges of broader domestic freedoms, a week before heading for New York as he seeks to rebuild Iran's tarnished international image.

A moderate by Iran's political standards, the mid-ranking cleric won a surprise victory in the Islamic republic's June presidential election.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday that flexibility was sometimes necessary in diplomacy as his negotiators prepared for new talks on his government's controversial nuclear drive.

Khamenei's comments, reported by state television, came after Iran's moderate new President Hasan Rowhani, who took office last month, said he would show flexibility in renewed talks with the major powers.