IRNA – Iran's Foreign Ministry has announced its firm support for the parliament bill that calls for passing nationality from Iranian mothers to their children, the spokesman for the ministry Abbas Mousavi said on Monday.

Rejecting reports on alleged opposition of Iran's Foreign Ministry to a bill that allows granting the country's citizenship to children born to Iranian mothers from foreigner dads, Mousavi said the ministry is one of the proposers and main supporters of the bill that has been sent to the parliament for later approval by the cabinet.

The general subject of the bill was passed by a vote of 188 positives against 20 on Sunday.

The move, as a positive development on protecting women's rights, has been welcomed inside Iran and abroad, as it will affect the life of a large number of children who have Iranian mothers and non-Iranian fathers and thus lack Iranian citizenship.

According to Iranian law, the citizenship is only passed on through Iranian fathers to their children.

Iran's parliament will discuss the details of the bill today in an open session.

The issue of granting citizenship to children born to Iranian mothers was raised a few years ago, but the death of the prominent female Iranian mathematician professor Maryam Mirzakhani was a big momentum to the move.

Mirzakhani, a Harvard graduate and Stanford professor, who was the first woman scientist winning the Fields Medal in the world, died in 2017 at the age of 40, three years after she was awarded the prestigious prize.

She hoped in her will that her only child, Anahita, would be granted Iranian citizenship right.

May 12, the day that Iran's parliament passed the general content of the bill, coincided with Mirzakhani's birthday.

At the 2018 World Meeting for Women in Mathematics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the Women’s Committee of the Iranian Mathematical Society suggested designating Maryam Mirzakhani’s birthday as a day for celebrating women in mathematics. The proposal was supported and approved by several organizations for women.