BEIRUT: Hezbollah MP Nawwaf Musawi said Sunday the opposition March 14 coalition would not be able to regain power even if the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad was brought down by the 11-month-old popular uprising.

Speaking during a political gathering in the southern village of Housh in the port city of Tyre, Musawi said the Future Movement-led March 14 parties were betting on the fall of the Assad regime in the hope of regaining power more than a year after Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s government was toppled by the Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance.

“The [March 14 parties’] escalating tone we are hearing reflects the hateful hearts of a group who were forced to leave the government and who know no other way to return to it except by waiting for the downfall of the Syrian regime and by building their glory on the illusion of this downfall,” he added.

“This illusion [about the regime’s collapse] has reached its highest level whereby some speakers at BIEL (Beirut International Exhibition and Leisure center) have begun behaving from a position of the victor who dictates conditions, calling them guarantees,” Musawi said.

He was referring to last week’s rally marking the seventh anniversary of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s 2005 assassination where March 14 leaders predicted the fall of the Assad regime in their speeches.

“Even if their wish for the collapse of the Syrian regime comes to pass – and it will not – they will not be able to change the internal equation in Lebanon,” Musawi said, in a clear reference to the new Parliament majority making up the government of Prime Minister Najib Mikati. Hezbollah and its March 8 allies have a majority in Mikati’s 30-member Cabinet.

The March 14 parties have voiced strong support for Syrian protesters demanding Assad’s ouster, while Hezbollah and its March 8 allies back the Assad regime.

Despite being riven by differences since it was formed last June, the current government had spared Lebanon the “dangers of strife and instability” amid the turbulence in the region as a result of the wave of popular revolts sweeping the Arab world, Musawi said.

“In any political process, we must witness polarization and a relationship that sometimes oscillates between accord and disagreement. This political coalition, which has succeeded in saving Lebanon from strife and managed to form a government coalition, is called upon today to make its experiment successful,” he added.

Musawi stressed the need for the major parties represented in the government to work to narrow differences and try to reach agreements to avoid a split within the government. The Cabinet has not met since Feb. 1 when Mikati suspended sessions following sharp differences with ministers from MP Michel Aoun’s parliamentary Change and Reform bloc over the appointments of Christians to key posts in the public administration.

Musawi rejected March 14 parties’ repeated calls for national dialogue on Hezbollah’s arms as well as the imposition of conditions on a national dialogue, stalled since November 2010.

“A dialogue aimed at disarming the resistance is a dialogue demanded by Israel. This will not be achieved in Lebanon. The Lebanese ought to discuss how to protect themselves against possible [Israeli] aggression rather than how to rid themselves of the defensive capabilities that protect them.”

“There is only one way to deal with the resistance and its political coalition and that is dialogue, which should not be conditional but based on protecting Lebanon against Israeli aggression,” Musawi said. “Lebanon is no longer an open arena for an Israeli military picnic every so often. Rather, it derives its immunity today from the resistance’s strength and arms,” he added.

Meanwhile, MP Mohammad Raad, head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, defended the resistance option, saying the current Arab popular uprisings have been inspired by the 1979 Iranian Revolution that overthrew the pro-West Shah of Iran.

“Today we are in harsh confrontation with the front of regional and international tyranny and hypocrisy which target our will and insistence on achieving our independence and sovereignty and regaining our dignity and self-confidence,” Raad told a rally in the southern town of Bint Jbeil commemorating the anniversary of slain resistance leaders.

“We are on a line of radical contradiction with the interests of world arrogance and the Zionist enemy,” he said. “This faithful and jihadist resistance ... is the choice that gives glory, pride and dignity to Lebanon and the region.”