Iran’s most legendary pop icon, Googoosh — known to millions as the “Voice of Iran,” silenced after the 1979 Islamic Revolution — urged President Donald Trump to “honor his words” and provide decisive support to the Iranian people as the clerical regime unleashed what she described as a nationwide slaughter aimed at crushing an uprising demanding the regime’s overthrow.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, the exiled singer and cultural icon said the words of an American president carry “a unique weight” at a moment when millions of Iranians rose up unarmed, only to be met with mass executions, hospital killings, and a sweeping campaign of terror aimed at extinguishing dissent.
Googoosh occupies a singular place in Iran’s modern history — a defining cultural figure whose music, film roles, and public image once embodied a cosmopolitan Iran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. At the height of her fame, she was not merely a pop star but a national icon — influencing fashion, cinema, and popular culture across the region before being forcibly silenced under clerical rule.
Even before the uprising erupted, and as demonstrations would soon spread rapidly to all 31 provinces, Googoosh — now 75 — said she had already made a deeply personal decision to step away from the stage, suspending what had widely been understood as farewell performances.
“My decision to step away from the stage last December was a spontaneous one, made well before the current wave of killings being carried out by this bloody regime,” she said. “I wanted the world to understand that art cannot exist comfortably when a nation no longer has water, electricity, a functional economy, or security from its own government.”
Googoosh said Iran’s collapse under clerical rule had stripped art itself of meaning — a conclusion shaped by her lifetime as one of the most influential artists in the country’s modern history.
“Today, more than ever, I maintain that art loses its meaning when a nation is suffering under the weight of state-sponsored violence and slaughter,” she said.
Googoosh said the nationwide demonstrations marked a decisive rupture — exposing a regime no longer able to rule through fear alone.
“Iranian people have shown in the last few weeks that they are no longer afraid,” she said, describing millions of unarmed citizens flooding the streets and standing unflinching before the “cold glare of the regime’s gun barrels” while demanding an end to the Islamic Republic.
In her telling, that defiance is precisely what triggered the regime’s brutality.
“It is the regime that is terrified of the people,” Googoosh said, noting that Tehran resorted to military-grade weapons and thousands of foreign mercenaries in an effort to crush the mass uprising.
“But optimism alone cannot stop a massacre,” the cultural icon emphasized — underscoring that courage alone cannot halt a regime prepared to wage war on its own citizens.
In a matter of days, she said, more than 30,000 lives were extinguished — including infants — with some reports placing the death toll as high as 80,000.
She described the campaign of terror as unfolding during and after the crackdown: wounded demonstrators executed in hospital beds, mass arrests, and systematic killings carried out in the shadows even as the regime attempted to project an image of normalcy to the outside world.
“There is no safe haven left,” Googoosh said. “Thousands continue to be arrested and systematically erased in the shadows.”
It was against this backdrop that Googoosh publicly addressed President Trump in a January 12 letter — shared with her nearly seven million Instagram followers — urging him to stand unwaveringly with the Iranian people and take urgent, decisive action as the crackdown intensified.
Days earlier, before the mass killings, Trump had issued a stark warning to Tehran. If peaceful protesters were violently killed, he declared in a January 2 Truth Social post, the United States would come to their rescue — making explicit that America was “locked and loaded.”
“The words of an American president carry a unique weight,” Googoosh said. “They represent a beacon of hope for those fighting for their lives.”
In her letter, she urged Trump to honor those words. While emphasizing that how support is delivered remains the president’s decision, she said she remains hopeful he will act.
“I remain hopeful that he will honor his promise and provide the decisive support necessary to protect the people being destroyed by this murderous regime,” she said, adding that responsibility does not rest with Washington alone. While the United States remains the indispensable leader in this moment, she said, the international community also carries a moral obligation to act.
Despite decades of repression, Googoosh said she believes the Islamic Republic is nearing the end of what she described as a nearly five-decade nightmare.
“I believe with all my heart that Iranians will soon wake from this,” she said, noting that many of her compatriots share the same conviction.
Looking beyond the regime’s collapse, she said the future must belong to the Iranian people themselves — through a transitional process leading to free and fair elections.
“I hope that I will be there to celebrate our freedom on Iranian soil,” the cultural icon declared. “That is the only stage that matters to me.”
Having lived through Iran before and after the Islamic Revolution, Googoosh described a future rooted not in nostalgia, but renewal.
“Before the revolution, people in Iran were free to live as they chose,” she said, recalling a society in which women dressed according to their beliefs, shared public life peacefully, and enjoyed legal equality and opportunity.
“In a free Iran, I believe those values will be restored — and taken even further,” she said, pointing to a younger generation she described as smart, brave, and resilient. Once the shadow of the current regime lifts, she said, they will build a society grounded in dignity, equality, creativity, and hope — perhaps even more vibrant than the one that was lost.
Her remarks echo themes explored in her recent memoir, Googoosh: A Sinful Voice, which chronicles how music, joy, and female artistic expression were criminalized after 1979 — and how Iranian culture endured quietly beneath the surface of repression.
“Since 1979, the world has seen Iran almost entirely through the lens of the Islamic Republic,” she said. “What remains largely misunderstood is the true nature of the Iranian people themselves.”
“I believe that once this regime is gone, the world will finally come to know the real Iran,” she said — a culture that embraces art, music, joy, and creativity.
“My own story simply offers a small window into that reality,” she added, “one that has endured quietly despite years of repression.”
Her message comes as tensions surrounding Iran reach a critical point — with mounting international pressure, escalating U.S. warnings, and a major American military buildup underway across the region — alongside growing signs that the clerical regime’s grip on power may be entering its most fragile phase yet.
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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