In this paper we analyze the long-time behavior of 3 dimensional Ricci flows with surgery. Our main result is that if the surgeries are performed correctly, then only finitely many surgeries occur and after some time the curvature is bounded by $C t^{-1}$. This result confirms a conjecture of Perelman. In the course of the proof, we also obtain a qualitative description of the geometry as $t \to \infty$. This paper is the third part of a series. Previously, we had to impose a certain topological condition $\mathcal{T}_2$ to establish the finiteness of the surgeries and the curvature control. The objective of this paper is to remove this condition and to generalize the result to arbitrary closed 3-manifolds. This goal is achieved by a new area evolution estimate for minimal simplicial complexes, which is of independent interest.

In this paper we analyze the long-Time behavior of 3-dimensional Ricci flow with surgery. We prove that under the topological condition that the initial manifold only has non-Aspherical or hyperbolic components in its geometric decomposition, there are only finitely many surgeries and the curvature is bounded by Ct-1 for large t . This proves a conjecture of Perelman for this class of initial topologies. The proof of this fact illustrates the fundamental ideas that are used in the subsequent papers of the author.

We show that the space of metrics of positive scalar curvature on any 3-manifold is either empty or contractible. Second, we show that the diffeomorphism group of every 3-dimensional spherical space form deformation retracts to its isometry group. This proves the Generalized Smale Conjecture. Our argument is independent of Hatcher's theorem in the $S^3$ case and in particular it gives a new proof of the $S^3$ case.

We complete the proof of the Generalized Smale Conjecture, apart from the case of $RP^3$, and give a new proof of Gabai's theorem for hyperbolic 3-manifolds. We use an approach based on Ricci flow through singularities, which applies uniformly to spherical space forms other than $S^3$ and $RP^3$ and hyperbolic manifolds, to prove that the moduli space of metrics of constant sectional curvature is contractible. As a corollary, for such a 3-manifold $X$, the inclusion $\text{Isom} (X,g)\to \text{Diff}(X)$ is a homotopy equivalence for any Riemannian metric $g$ of constant sectional curvature.

We prove that Ricci flows with almost maximal extinction time must be nearly round, provided that they have positive isotropic curvature when crossed with R2. As an application, we show that positively curved metrics on S3 and RP3 with almost maximal width must be nearly round.

In a recent paper, Brendle showed the uniqueness of the Bryant soliton among 3-dimensional $\kappa$-solutions. In this paper, we present an alternative proof for this fact and show that compact $\kappa$-solutions are rotational symmetric. Our proof arose from independent work relating to our Strong Stability Theorem for singular Ricci flows.

We verify a conjecture of Perelman, which states that there exists a canonical Ricci flow through singularities starting from an arbitrary compact Riemannian 3-manifold. Our main result is a uniqueness theorem for such flows, which, together with an earlier existence theorem of Lott and the second named author, implies Perelman's conjecture. We also show that this flow through singularities depends continuously on its initial condition and that it may be obtained as a limit of Ricci flows with surgery. Our results have applications to the study of diffeomorphism groups of three manifolds --- in particular to the Generalized Smale Conjecture --- which will appear in a subsequent paper.