The diocese was established by Italian Dominican friars on 12 October 1629 when
Isfahan was the capital of the
Safavid Empire.
The cathedral was situated in the then Christian suburb of
New Julfa. This diocese continued under the rule of Shah
Safi I. The next appointments of bishops were only possible with longer interruptions from 1693 until 1708 (Elias Mutton) and from 1716 until 1731 (Barnabas Fedeli). The small Catholic community in Isfahan was devastated by the
Afghan invasion of the city in 1722. In consequence the titular diocese was administered from the see of Baghdad with only a handful of Catholic families surviving in Isfahan. In the 19th century, Catholic missionaries were able to restart activities in Iran. From their center in
Urmia, apostolic administrators tried to reorganize the Latin Church in the country. In 1896, the Lazarist missionary François Lesné was made bishop of Isfahan. Like his successor, Jacques-Emile Sontag, he resided in Urmia in Western Iran which until
World War I held a sizeable Christian population of
Assyrians. The diocese was elevated to an archdiocese on 1 July 1910. After the devastation of the Christian population during and after World War I, the see of Isfahan fell vacant again. It was not until 1974 that a new archbishop of Isfahan could be instituted. For this the Dominican priest
Kevin William Barden at Tehran was chosen. Since then the see of the diocese has been at Tehran. When Barden was expelled from the country in the beginning of the Islamic revolution in 1980, it took another 9 years until the Salesian
Ignazio Bedini was consecrated new archbishop. Following his retirement in 2014, the diocese was administered by an apostolic administrator until the consecration of
Dominique Joseph Mathieu in 2021. == Leadership ==