I submitted my paper to ICLR, after improving and correcting since I "published" it previously in a workshop/arXiv. In this process, I changed the name of the method and title.

Now a reviewer, pointed out that my method is very closely related to basically an old version of my paper, and wants me to compare against it. Understandably, if looking at the title and method name, one could think these are two different ones. However, if looking more closely, they are clearly the same...

How do I argue for this to my friend, that they are exactly the same paper, but now corrected and improved, without breaking anonymity?

Admittedly, the scores are anyway bad, so I have not much hope, but this is a first for me...