can it not be done using CSS, like all our current support for RTL?

Using CSS was the first thing I tried (e.g. direction: rtl), but unfortunately, that didn't work, whether the style was added to the time tag itself or the parent span tag.

Ultimately, the problem is that the generated text mixes LTR (i.e. the Western Arabic numerals) and RTL characters.

I've made the requested changes!