In an RTL language, you don't even need to mirror it.

Or, to put it another way: if you think it needs to point to the right, is that because the text you read flows that way?

This then makes me wonder if the large portion of the world's population that read right-to-left find the currently widely-used external link symbol (as discussed in the article) a bit jarring.

> makes me wonder if the large portion of the world's population that read right-to-left find the currently widely-used external link symbol (as discussed in the article) a bit jarring

The symbol appears mirrored in RTL languages on Wikipedia, e.g. this random Arabic article: https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%83%D8%B3%D9%86...

Or does it point to the right because a new tab will open, to the right of the current one?

Come to think of it, are tabs aligned toward the right side when the browser/OS is set to an RTL language?