Tasnim � Iran�s Foreign Ministry spokesman did not rule out the possibility of prisoner exchanges with the US.

�We have already announced readiness to secure the release and return to the country of Iranian hostages (jailed) in the US,�Seyed Abbas Mousavi said.

�They (the Americans) have some prisoners in our country due to security-related crimes and their crimes are indisputable,� he said.

Mousavi referred to the goodwill efforts made by some countries, including those by the Swiss ambassador to Iran, and said Tehran has hailed the efforts from the humanitarian point of view and taken measures in this regard.

He added that if there are grounds for exchange of prisoners, Iran will use all its diplomatic capacities to secure the release of Iranians jailed in the US on baseless charges.

On Monday, Iranian scientist Majid Taheri, who had been imprisoned in the US for more than 16 months, finally returned home on Monday.

The Iranian national who was a longtime resident of the US state of Florida, spent 16 months in prison for allegedly violating US sanctions on Iran.

The development came days after another Iranian scientist Sirous Asgari, a professor of material sciences at Sharif University of Technology, also returned home.

He spent about three years in US detention on trumped-up charges of fraud and theft of information relating to his work with a university in Ohio. The case however, was dismissed by a US district judge and he managed to return to his country.

Iran has called on Washington to release all other Iranian citizens taken hostage. The country says the US must make up for the damages caused by detaining Iranian scientists.