'We have been preparing': Why the boots on the ground in Iran could be Kurdish

 

For a sixth day, the US and Israel are battering targets in Iran, waging war from the air. Could there soon be boots on the ground? Maybe. But not American ones.

Iranian Kurdish opposition groups in exile in northern Iraq have told the BBC they have plans to cross the border - and have had them for decades - but they flatly deny claims that their fighters have already done so.

"We have been preparing for this for the past 47 years, since the age of the Islamic Republic," said Hana Yazdanpana, of the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), which claims to have the biggest armed force.

But she insisted that "not a single Peshmerga has moved". The Kurdish word peshmerga means "those who face death".