The Saudis helped create a monster they can't control in Iraq

Qatar has officially stopped giving aid to more radical groups under US pressure, and Saudi Arabia has also backed off its support of the rebels, a process the culminated in the removal of spy chief and Syria point man Prince Bandar bin Sultan earlier this year, but private donations from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states – notably Kuwait – have likely continued.

For the last few months, the Saudi government in particular has been attempting, somewhat awkwardly, to both continue to fund non-extremist groups fighting Syria’s Bashar Assad while combating the growth of al-Qaeda and its affiliates and offshoots. The kingdom has good reason to fear the revival of an al-Qaeda-like group with wide territorial ambitions. The government claims to have broken up a terrorist cell in May that had links to both ISIL and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. ISIL has also reportedly launched a recruitment drive in Riyadh.

Al-Maliki has accused both Saudi Arabia and Qatar of directly supporting the group. The Gulf monarchies would certainly prefer to see his Shi’ite-dominated government replaced, but in addition to the risk of blow-back against their regimes from ISIL terrorism, the geopolitical situation in Iraq seems unlikely to work itself out in their favour.

Saudi Arabia, in particular, has watched with growing alarm in recent months, and relations between the US and Iran have begun to improve. Now, thanks to the Iraq crisis, we’re seeing the nearly unprecedented possibility of US-Iranian security cooperation to help resolve the situation.

None of the likely outcomes in Iraq – a prolonged period of violent chaos in Iraq giving extremists a new base of operations, unilateral Iranian intervention, US-Iranian cooperative intervention – is going to be viewed very favourably across the Gulf.

I doubt the plan to fund the Syrian rebels is working out quite as anticipated.