Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday travelled to the United States to deliver a "tough response" Thursday at the UN General Assembly to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's address a day earlier.

In his address earlier Wednesday, Ahmadinejad predicted the " elimination" of Israel and said Iran was under a "continued threat " by "uncivilized Zionists." The Iranian president made the remarks on the eve of the Jewish Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) fast, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

"In my remarks to the UN General Assembly, they will hear my response. As the Prime Minister of Israel, the state of the Jewish people, I am working in every way so that Iran will not have nuclear weapons," Netanyahu said in a statement.

Prof. Shlomo Aronson, of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told Xinhua on Thursday that Netanyahu is likely to try to combine two subjects in his speech, first the Iranian nuclear issue and secondly to counter Ahmadinejad's remarks that Israel has no historical roots in the Middle East.

"The main point is that just a week ago Iran has been exposed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - and not by Netanyahu - that it was bluffing and cheating," Aronson said.

"So everything that Netanyahu needs to do is to quote the IAEA report in which Iran has been exposed as a liar; and if he is going to do it cleverly enough he could succeed in exposing the Iranian campaign of lies and cheating," he added.

The IAEA, considered the world body's nuclear watchdog, two weeks ago published a report which said that Iran had shut down a probe of a site suspected of being used for work on nuclear weapons development - while at the same time increasing the number of centrifuges used in the process.

"Netanyahu probably would say that if you don't draw redlines it means that you are giving this regime (Iranian government) a license to and go on to produce a bomb," Aronson said.

Aronson added that Netanyahu will touch on Ahmadinejad's remarks that Israel has no roots in the region, by saying that "it was ancient Iran's Persian King Cyrus which allowed the Jews to return to the land of present-day Israel, in order to rebuild the Second Temple in Jerusalem."

Ahmadinejad and the Iranian government have often portrayed Israel as a foreign colony with no right to exist in the Middle East.

Prof. Ze'ev Maghen, of Bar-Ilan University, said that he expected Netanyahu's speech to be "a moving speech and a powerful one," but said that as far as content goes, there isn't anything that hasn't been said before.

Netanyahu has described a nuclear armed Iran as an "existential threat" to Israel and that the Jewish state can't allow this to happen, a euphemism for a possible military strike.

However, Israel lacks the military capabilities to conduct a strike that will fully end Iran's program, according to foreign experts and it needs the help of the United States and while U.S. President Barack Obama during his UN General Assembly speech Tuesday said that Iran won't be allowed to cross the nuclear threshold, Jerusalem and Washington disagree on the timetable and the urgency of the issue.

The disparity has led to sharp tension between Netanyahu and Obama, with Obama referring to constant calls from Netanyahu for tougher sanctions and a clearly defines redline for when the United States would take military action as "noise," which he would filter away when setting U.S. policy on Iran.

However, in the last few days both sides have been working to lower the pressure, and Netanyahu isn't expected to make any statements in his speech that would ire the United States.

Netanyahu is set to meet with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the EU's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, but not with Obama during his visit.