During that scene I found myself wondering if that was the Dark One's plan for Semirhage all along. Give her a chance to use the Domination Band on Rand, and her actions are pretty predictable. She immediately begins asserting her will over him in the most horrifying ways possible, torturing him and forcing him to do terrible things. Within minutes, she does what every other Forsaken could not do: she breaks Rand.

But then immediately after Shaidar Haran sics Semirhage on Rand, the Dark One offers Rand a way out of his situation. Access to the TP is given right at Rand's lowest moment, the time when he is willing to do ANYTHING to protect Min. It is because of that scene that Rand almost loses everything. He feels the temptation to use the TP over the next few weeks, and only by constantly holding the Choe'dan Kal is he able to fend off the desire to feel that power once again.

But even though the Dark One doesn't get Rand hooked on the TP just then, Semirhage's actions still set Rand on a path that brings him dangerously close to becoming corrupted. His paranoia increases tenfold, and where before Rand wanted to create, now he only wants to destroy. He abandons Arad Doman as a lost cause, he erases Graendal's palace from the face of the earth out of sheer frustration, and he nearly murders his own father in a fit of rage and finding out that Cadsuane has pulled Tam into another one of her schemes. This is exactly the kind of behavior that the DO wants to encourage. He wants Rand to lose hope. He wants him to think that the only way out of his situation is to destroy anyone who opposes him, using Balefire if necessary.

It is only through divine intervention that Rand is able to overcome his impulse to give up and destroy everything. At the top of Dragonmount, Rand comes within a hair's breadth of giving the Dark One exactly what he wants, before the Creator gives him a nudge at just the right moment to allow Rand to have his Revelation. The whole world stood on the precipice of destruction, and it was only the Creator's guidance that saved Rand from giving in.