This story is now being carried by WSJ.. the likelihood that it’s real only seems to grow each day. If true, this will be the humanitarian price the war is measured against, assuming the casualties don’t grow further.

I can’t argue with you there. The Pentagon’s silence is deafening; I only want to caution myself as much as anyone against jumping to conclusions. It may be AI, it may be bad intelligence, it may be Russian counterintelligence, it may be an IRGC false flag, it may be a little bit of all of the above.

> On top of that, the IRGC isn’t big on educating women

They're pretty lousy at the collegiate level (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_education_in_Iran) but: oh, come on.

> CNN skews heavily to the left.

Not for at least a decade, CNN is run by extremely hard right folks today

The AllSides evaluation for CNN is interesting: https://www.allsides.com/news-source/cnn-media-bias.

They have CNN currently rated as "Lean Left", changed from "Left" a few years ago due to the changes you point out. You'll need to read the fine text to see their reasoning. While there were some votes that they are now biased to Right, this was a minority position.