Iran x Israel/US conflict ends by December 31?

A signed initial agreement exists. A 60-day ceasefire framework is in place. US and Iranian negotiators committed on June 17 to a structure that includes uranium dilution, monitoring, Hormuz reopening, and sanctions relief. The architecture for ending this war has been constructed — the question is whether it holds, extends, and deepens into the kind of widely recognized conclusion that this contract requires. The resolution criteria is demanding in a specific way. The contract doesn't just require a signed deal — it requires the active armed conflict to have ended under widely recognized terms with no ongoing shooting war between main parties. A frozen conflict with intermittent flare-ups, a Hezbollah front that continues independently, or Houthi operations that persist despite the US-Iran framework could all produce a situation where a deal exists but the conflict resolution criteria isn't met. The specific obstacles worth naming: Israel's foreign minister has explicitly refused to give a timeline for when hostilities could fully end, saying the conflict continues "until Israel and the U.S. determine the time is right to stop." Hezbollah has resisted disarmament as part of any Lebanon front resolution. Iran has continued harassing shipping in Hormuz even during the ceasefire framework period. Each of those friction points represents a potential resolution failure mode independent of the US-Iran bilateral track. The analytical structure is a race between two competing dynamics. The 60-day window could deepen into a more permanent ceasefire covering all fronts — the optimistic scenario where the June 17 framework proves to be the genuine turning point. Or it could produce a frozen conflict where the US-Iran bilateral dimension is managed while proxy fronts continue, creating a situation that neither clearly qualifies as "war ended" nor unambiguously extends the hot conflict. Bottom line: The ceasefire framework makes "conflict ended by December 31" meaningfully more probable than it was before June 17, without making it the base case. Watch whether the 60-day window produces specific, verifiable implementation steps — uranium transfer, Hormuz normalization, Hezbollah front stabilization — as the leading indicators that distinguish genuine conflict termination from managed de-escalation that falls short of this contract's resolution threshold.