Marzieh, the great diva of Persian traditional song, who was silenced after the Islamic Revolution in 1979 but who re-emerged years later outside Iran as a singer and a highly public supporter of the resistance, died Wednesday in Paris. She was 86 and had defected to France in 1994.

Her death, of cancer, was announced on the website of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the opposition group, founded in 1981 and based in France, of which she was a member. Survivors include a son and a grandchild.

A household name in pre-revolutionary Iran, Marzieh was as closely identified with her country’s music as the great Egyptian chanteuse Umm Kulthum was with hers. Marzieh began her career in the early 1940s, and was for decades a ubiquitous presence on radio and in concert. Over the years she performed for many world leaders, including the Shah of Iran, Queen Elizabeth II, Charles de Gaulle and Richard M. Nixon.

Marzieh, whose rich, throaty mezzo-soprano was often likened to Edith Piaf’s, was famed for her vast repertory, said to span 1,000 songs. She was known in particular for her expressive interpretations of songs of love, many of which were settings of the work of the renowned Persian lyric poets of the Middle Ages and afterward.