Redirecting incoming traffic to 127.0.0.1

[Henry Ritzlmayr <h.ritzlmayr@gmx.at>]

I have a service running on a box wich is only able to bind to 127.0.0.1
(hardcoded and I can´t get the source to change it). Since I want to use
it from any other box the only way to solve that I think is to nat
incoming packets to 127.0.0.1.

IPTABLES -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -d 172.16.172.12 -j DNAT
--to-destination 127.0.0.1

and many others wich I tried don´t work. 

If I understood REDIRECT correctly it only changes to the local IP where
the packet came in (in my situation 172.16.172.12) wich also not solves
the problem. 

any ideas?

Henry