Iptables redirect to localhost?

that can be done with iptables, but only with kernel >= 3.6.

You will have to do:

sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.all.route_localnet=1
iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to 127.0.0.1:8080

ip_forward is not necessary, because the packet is not forwarded, but if you don't include the sysctl for route_localnet (which works only in kernels >= 3.6), the packet will be dropped by the kernel because it considers it a "martian", coming from the outside and having a destination address of 127.0.0.1

sysctl net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination 127.0.0.1:8080