The Aryan race is from old racial theories. The idea was to connect Europeans with Indo-Iranian settlers. Aryan refers to, in theory, both Indo-Iranian and European groups, but 'Aryan' in the Nazi/White Supremacist context refers only to the Indo-European side of things. Primarily, this connection was used to connect Europeans to ancient Persians, who were considered to be a superior race. The whole idea was largely that Germanic races were the 'true successors' of the ancient Persians, who were everything the Nazis wanted to be (wise, noble, scientific, etc).

Aryan's word etymology literally means those things--it means 'honorable' and 'noble', which are things the Nazis wanted to be associated with.

It was believed at the time that Germanic-speaking Europeans originally came from Iran.

More importantly, it was believed that Jews did not come from Iran, so "Aryan" was a useful way to distinguish Indo-European Germans from Jewish Germans. (And it had a whiff of scientific authority about it.) The fact that, say, Pakistanis could equally describe themselves as Aryan wasn't an issue for the Nazis. They just needed to distinguish themselves from the Jews.

A similar thing happened in the United States with the term Caucasian. In that case, they were concerned with distinguishing European-Americans from African-Americans. The fact that Pakistanis are just as "Caucasian" as the typical white person wasn't an issue for them at the time.

It became an issue later, though, when a high-caste Indian man demanded to be treated as a "Caucasian" in racially-segregated America. It went about as well as you would think.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Bhagat_Singh_Thind

hi! you may be interested in the great discussion in this post

I am an Iranian(Persian) and have a question about the word "Aryan" and the "Aryan People".

Just to clarify, the region was referred to as Ariana, and the people were Arians.

Your definition incorrectly assumes only two locations and is missing out the bulk of Ariana, therefore defining it as only northern India and Iran isn't accurate.

Afghanistan and Tajikistan, (most of) Turkmenistan, (southern) Uzbekistan and Pakistan down to the Indus were considered Ariana by the Greeks.

The use of the term "Aryan" by European nationalists dates back to the 19th century, when the relationship between Indo European languages had just recently been discovered, and Indo European studies was in its cradle. We knew far less about the original Indo-Europeans back then compared to what we know today.

The name Aryan began to be used about the original Indo-Europeans because the authors of the oldest religious texts in Sanskrit and Persian, the Rig Veda and Avesta, called themselves Aryans. The term should be confined only to the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European but these texts were a newly discovered source of mystical fascination in the 19th century, and the term Aryan soon spread beyond its proper geographic and linguistic confines.

With the rise of nationalism in the emerging nation-states of Europe, politicians had a need for an ancient and "pure" ethno-linguistic heritage for these new states. The original speakers of Indo-European were molded into the image of distant ancestors of such nations, and "scientists" all over Europe were competing to find evidence that their particular country was the ancient "Aryan Homeland". The Aryans were envisioned as a tall, light-complexioned, blonde race, superior to all other peoples.

These ideas resonated particularly well with the Nationalists in Germany, and the Nazis used this image of the Aryan master race thoroughly in their propaganda. The white supremacists of today inherited their use of the term from there.

Source: Anthony (2010): The Horse, the Wheel, and Language.

So traditional aryan supremecists wouldn't have a problem with any of the Indo-European descendants?(India,Pakistan,Mediterranean region?)