I used to work in a nuclear power plant. Once, we recieved notice about a van parked in a nearby major city that had radioactive material inside. It turned out to be a van from a large hospital and it contained some medical isotopes. Yep, it was cesium. Wow! Were the police really hyper over this, and that was way back in 1988.
That kind of radioactive waste is typical of medical offices. Do they have medical facitlities in Central Asia and Russia? I believe so. Though I am surprised they don’t keep better control of it, shipping a bucket-full of low-level radioactive medical waste is not deserving of international notice.
“shipping a bucket-full of low-level radioactive medical waste is not deserving of international notice.”
Ordinarily, maybe not. And this may turn out to be nothing.
But Iran has been caught several times trying to import very large sums of things like alarms that contain very small amounts of radioactive material and other such seemingly insignificant shipments. There was also an Iranian plane identified as carrying radioactive material which was shadowed by fighter jets over Czech republic about 2 months ago.
When it comes to Iran, any radioactive materials headed for the country deserve attention.