CAIRO — The Islamic State is declaring financial war on the United States.

Al-Hayat Media Center, which is affiliated with IS, recently broadcast a big-budget film titled “The Rise of the Caliphate: Return of the Gold Dinar.” In the film, aired Aug. 29, IS talks about destroying the US dollar by excluding it from international financial transactions and replacing it with gold, silver and copper.

IS said the United States deceived the world. According to the film’s content, in 1913, the United States established the Federal Reserve Bank and pledged to pay gold on demand for the dollar. However, following World War I the United States switched from the gold standard to a flat greenback currency at the local level. After gold flowed to the United States from several countries in the world — as a result of World War I and World War II — the United States created a new system governing banking and foreign exchange called Bretton Woods to maintain the dollar's convertibility into gold at the international level. However, in 1971, President Richard Nixon suspended the dollar’s convertibility into gold. The Bretton Woods system dissolved between 1968 and 1973, according to the International Monetary Fund. According to IS, the United States maintained its currency in a “satanic way” by using oil, described by the United States as black gold, and forced countries to buy and sell oil in dollars through the petrodollar system. 

Now, IS asserts that replacing the dollar with gold will push major powers such as China and Russia, who had bought US Treasury bills, to sell these bills, leading to a complete collapse of the US financial system.