I never said they believed the same as Nicene Trinitarians, but they were certainly closer (in as much as they can be said to have a single position) to Nicenes than to Islam. Consider the creed of Ulfilas, the Arian apostle to the Goths:
I, Ulfila, bishop and confessor, have always so believed, and in this, the one true faith, I make the journey to my Lord; I believe in one God the Father, the only unbegotten and invisible, and in his only-begotten son, our Lord and God, the designer and maker of all creation, having none other like him (so that one alone among all beings is God the Father, who is also the God of our God); and in one Holy Spirit, the illuminating and sanctifying power...
It is not consistent with Nicene Trinitarianism because it establishes a hierarchy between Father, Son, and Spirit. However, it clearly establishes three persons and explicitly identifies the Son as 'our God' and the 'maker of all creation'.
I'll look up my references later if you want more detail, but when the Arians called Jesus "God" and "maker of all creation" they meant that he was a sort of demiurge, not God himself. That's why the Nicene Creed explicitly calls Jesus "true God of true God", to rule out this position by making it clear that he is God in the same way that God the Father is.