Iran is beginning to acknowledge the scale of recent protests that swept across the Islamic Republic, with one lawmaker quoted as saying authorities arrested more than 7,000 people.

The comment by Hossein Naghavi Hosseini, who sits on parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, came as Iran's interior minister claimed that demonstrators wanted to take over state television.

Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli offered no evidence for his claim during an interview aired late on Tuesday night on Iranian state television. Protests weren't reported around state TV's headquarters in northern Tehran.



The minister also said approximately seven hundred banks and 140 government buildings had been set on fire during recent protests in which he claimed 200,000 took part, Reuters reported quoting state news agency IRNA.

Iran has yet to offer any definitive statistics for the unrest, which began November 15 when officials sharply raised government-set gasoline prices.

Amnesty International says it believes violence in the protests and a security force crackdown killed at least 143 people.